Music Matters
by Deidato
Summary: [AU Rock] A foot in the pit, another on the stage. This was the double life that Castiel had happily chosen by meeting Dean Winchester. A life at the sound of guitars, on the roads between two motels. A life where music counts as much as the musicians. Sometimes even more. A life where ghosts of the past are songs and inks under the skin.
1. Chapter 1 : The Woman in White

This is a translation of the amazing french story "Music Matters" by Skadia.  
>Neither Skadia or me own any of the characters, but the songs are from Skadia.<p>

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 1 :<strong> The Woman in White

"I just wanna die now, and get it over with."

The boy was young, frightfully thin, his crooked elbowswere sinking into the mattress and his face was writhing without a single glow of appeasement ever. The doctor had a son around his age. He was armored, immuned against his patients pain, it was necessary in his profession. But the kid was awfully pale. Except where the hematomas had stained his skin with a grisly rainbow. He was feeling bad for him.

"Can't we get it over ?" The boy asked again imploring him with his blue eyes reddened by sleepless nights and the tears he was refusing to let flow. He was named after an angel and the doctor knew that between two treatments, the nurses were grieving seing him dying little by little.  
>The last appraisals were bad. Awfully bad. The doctor leaned on the boy's bed.<p>

"You want to stop feeling pain, Castiel, not to die."  
>"At that stage, there's no difference" the kid grumbled.<p>

That very night, his name passed on the prioritary list for a bone marrow graft. Through the locked door and the mist of his sleepless nights he heard his mother moan and cry. Prioritary list, as to say imminent deaths list. He closed his eyes and tried vainly to think about anything else but the pain crushing his bones and spilling acid through his veins.

##

On the paper it was a good idea. On the paper it was a good deed and it could save a life. But fuck it was hurting like hell ! The anesthetic cream he had had on his hip was only anesthezising his skin but not the bone where a sadistic executioner was about to thrust a mandril so big that Dean had decided to decribe it to Sam like a rhinoceros horn. He grited his teeth hanging on the thought he was about to save a life.  
>A fat lot of good it was doing to him.<p>

"You're okay ?"

The voice came from far away and he noded thinking _no, of course he wasn't fucking ok !_  
>He kept going on uttering a litany of insults in his mind until the general anesthesia dive him into a saving sleep.<p>

##

"Beautiful day to be reborn, isn't it ?"

Castiel didn't felt like pointing out to the doctor how his happy exclamation seemed ridiculous to him. But the pain had attenuated and he could be grateful for that. Nauseas and perpetual tiredness were still here, but the doctor was promising it would only be getting better.

"The graft actually took, and if you're regular in your follow-up treatment it will get better in no time."

Castiel noded slowly and watched the nurse who unhooked the plastig bag wich dangled down on a IV pole on his right. A few bloody mark were remaining in the manifold she rolded up on itself before plugging the drip.

He decided that light red was his favorite color and then fell asleep without noticing.

##

The girl was softly stroking his hand while he was drowsing in his hospital bed, the rest of the anesthesia making him drift in a blissful hebetude.

"What do you wanna be later ?"

Dean barely heard the question and answered the first thing that crossed his mind.

"A rockstar" he whispered opening his eyes a little. His eyelids were so heavy he closed them almost immediatly.

"But I love the cars too"

He fell asleep before he could end his phrase.  
>It wasn't that hard, finally, to save a life.<p>

##

Five years later.

They were in an unpretencious bar wich had hired them for a five representations serie. They were playing in the almost general indifference and sometimes sold a few CD they were burning themselves. Mostly it was a life that suited them. Dean was watching on Sam like he had always done, and Sam was looking for trouble like he had always done. Frequently, they sat at the counter, the old leather notebook containing all their compositions between them, and, with each a pen in their hand, they wrote songs like one does exquisite corpses.  
>The first pages were reseved for the songs list and over time they had saw emerge common themes like a very long horror story put on rhymes on Dean's guitar chords and the rhythm of Sam's drums.<p>

"You know, most people write love story in their songs" the younger brother joked, his large body wallowed on the counter, rotating his stool one side to another without his shoulder or torso moving. He always ended up resting his head on one of his arms, his pen pointed in the air as if inspiration was going to strike him like lightning. His too long and poorly cut hairs brushed the sticky counter.

"Looks like we're not most people" Dean replicated clicking his pen on his beer bottle.  
>Later in the night, they would go back to the motel, the first one in the directory, the cheapest, and would sleep until the day after. It was a wandering life and it suited them.<p>

Why had it been different that night ?

Why in the middle of the indifferent crowd was there a young man who wasn't quiting his eyes off Dean ? It happened sometimes and it always made him feel rather akward. It was weird for someone who had decreed willing to be a rockstar at his eighteen to not appreciate the others's eyes on him. Although it amused Sam a lot. Dean knew he could bear a crowd's watch without frown, he had already did in circumstances more or less enjoyable. But the stranger was barely blinking, wasn't moving from his position down the bar and was shooting at him an oddly fixed look. Dean missed a chord and lost the thread of his song without anyone but Sam noticed. He force himself to look away from the stranger down the bar and concentrated on what he was singing. There was no other incident in the evening.

At the end of the representation Dean called "Guitar Tour" he let Sam repack his drums while he went to order them two beers. The barmaid smiled to him.

"The drinks are on the house" she said. He winked at her and waited his brother draining his first drink of the night. Sam came back quickly, his drumsticks rising from his jean back pocket. He held the old notebook to Dean.

"Inspired ?"

"Not at all" the older answered helding him his drink. Sam perched himself on the stool he made rotate from left to right, his only fixed point seemed to be his hands wrapped around his beer.

"What happened to you earlier ? You didn't missed a chord in mounths."

"There was a guy watching me."

Sam raised an eyebrow adorned with a silver ring (Dean had stopped long ago to try to count the amount of piercing of his brother, it'd seemed to him he had a new one per mounth and and others were disappearing the same rhythm).

"The trench coat guy over there ?" he asked indicating the stranger with his bottleneck.

"He's still looking at you. Want me to leave you two alone ?" he had that grin that displeased Dean.

"Don't you have a poor fangirl to drag in the back room instead making fun of me ?" he grunted.

"Why poor ? No one complained until now !" Sam said grining.

"You know that some day being part of a shabby rockband won't be enough to pick up girls ? That you'll have to develop a real personality for that ?" Dean teased.

Sam got up and pushed the notebook toward his brother.

"Or we seriously work on become famous so we can really earn our living with our music ? Now work big bro' !"

Dean watched him go away with a blond girl who was 8 inches shorter than him and they went out of the bar leaving the singer alone with his beer and his notebook. He was turning the pages absentmindedly without changing anything.

"_Can I tell you something_ is a good song" a deep voice said next to him. The trench coat stranger had came close to the bar and was climbing on a stool gesturing the barmaid for her to bring him a beer.

"Do we know each other ?" Dean asked on a crabbed tone. He wasn't supposed to adress like that to one of the rare person who was really paying attention to his music, he knew that, but the stranger was making him uncomfortable. From a close look, his eyes wich almost didn't blink were a pretty blue turning a bit on green because of the dusty lightning in the bar. He looked young and tired.

"You saved my life."

"I don't remember doing anything like that" the musician answered amused.

"Five years ago, the 18th of september, you made a bone marrow donation."

"How do you know that ?" Dean asked resting abruptly his beer on the counter.

"Because I was the receiver."

"I thought that stuff was anonymous !"

"It is. Took me two years to find you."

He was looking at Dean with eyes within the singer was seeinng nothing more but a sort of relief. He was still on his guard but that guy, no, that kid, knew something bout him only Sam knew. Even their father ignored that Dean had given his bone marrow. He had still a little scar on his hip he brushed with the top of his thumb when he was feeling a bit useless, a bit wretched for choosing a wandering life rather than doing something useful to the society.

"I'm Castiel" the stranger said extending a pale hand that Dean shook by automatism.

"Why trying to find me ? Got some complainings ?"

Castiel shook his head and lowered his eyes on his own beer still untouched.

"I just wanted to thank you. It was important for me."

Dean didn't answered. The other stood up, taking his drink with him after waving him goodbye. The singer's voice, barely louder than the bar's hubbub topped him.

"What do you do for a living ?"

Castiel turned back puzzled and Dean made a little smile shrugging "I wouldn't want the life I unintentionally saved being stupidly wasted. So what do you do of your second chance ?"

"I'm studying mathematics" Castiel said "and accountancy."

Dean smothered on his beer "You're kiding right ?"

The other shook his head with a light smile. Dean gestured him with his chin to invite him sitting next to him.

"I like the numbers immutability. Whatever you do, one plus one always make two."

Dean had a light smile "Sometimes one and one end making three after 9 months."

Castiel seemed puzzled a few seconds before understanding and he shook his head again.

"This is exactly why accountancy pleases me. This sort of item isn't taken into account."

"You're a weird kid" Dean commented, amused despite himself.

"Anything youwant to complain about ?" Castiel joked.

Dean shrugged and they ended their beers silently.

Castiel was still here the night after and he slipped away right after the brothers's singing tour. Dean saw him again only weeks after. At intervals they shared a beer and once only Dean saw him swallow some pills with his first mouthful. The idea of the young man worked in his head like a cat meowing in front of the door until you open it. Castiel settled down gradually in his life like the unknown cat who curls on the crouch without someone had told anything. Purring so hard you don't have the courage to dismiss him. Castiel didn't purr, but Dean couldn't find in himself the slightest will to drive him away from him. This lasted some weeks, some mounths.  
>How from that did they move to a night their hands were running on each other's body, Castiel's back pressed against the outside wall of the bar where Free Will had just gave a performance ? None of the two could have answered. It seemed natural and they wanted it. Castiel liked things certain and immutable, Dean liked the heat of the moment. They were functionning curiously well, as if their blood compatibility was assuring their souls compatibility.<p>

"Why did you wait so long before showing yourself ?" Dean asked between two kisses. Castiel was kissing like nothing in the world was more important than the musician's lips against his.

"I wanted to wait five years."

"Why five years ?"

Castiel raised his left wrist on wich, in the twilight, Dean couldn't have discerned a tatoo if he hadn't already saw it in day light. A dandelion whose were falling five egrets.

"Five years of total remission. It means I've fully recovered. I wanted to be sure I hadn't done all that work for finally relapsing after thanking you."

Dean lifted his hand up to Castiel's wrist where he dropped a light kiss. "One more egret per year ?" he asked brushing the flower in slight overprint wth his thumb. Castiel noded.

"Your arm will be fully covered by it someday."

"I hope so. And this will be totally thank to you."

##

Three years later.  
>Eight egrets. Castiel was massaging his arm with a healing cream, runnning his thumb again and again on the sensitizised skin just like if it had been burnt. He was lying on Dean's bench in the tourbus. Dean still wasn't getting used to have a bus to travel one state to another, he wasn't getting used to the notoriety either. But it was quiet nice not navigate anymore from motel to motel at the rhythme of bar hiring them for one night or two. I t was nice to know that now, Sam wouldn't lack anything and that they wouldn't have to cram his drums in the trunk of an old car ready to expire anymore. They weren't famous or rich enough to believe they would be healthy forever, but they situation was way more confortable than two years ago now that they had signed in an independent label who assured them an important publicity to expand their public.<p>

In the little built-in screen above the tourbus table, Rose Dawson was talking about the love of her life. "He saved me... in every way that a person can be saved."

Dean sighed and contracted all of his muscles to strech himself without oving from his position in his bunk, his arms wrapped around Castiel who didn't take his eyes off the movie.

"I can't believe you're making me watch _Titanic_ form the fifth time !" he growled.

"I didn't forced you." replied the other.

It was true, but Dean didn't intent to take that as a good reason enough to not bitch. They were heading toward a town Dean had already forgotten the name. Later in the evening, Castiel would tape a paper with the town's name on the bottom of his mic so he wouldn't commit an odd. He'd be somewhere in the crowd, probably their most ancien fan and the most loyal one. Sam and Kevin would probalby mingle with the crowd after the show while Charlie would help the roadies to store the equipment. It was a ritual that was only disrupted by Castiel's presence or absence. It lasted for three mounths already and Dean would see the end of the tour coming with relief and gratitude. He let himself being cradled by the truck's purring and the regular jolt of the road, removed his already numb arm from under his lover's body and fell asleep while Rose and Jack were partying in the third classes's steerage, cradled by the monotonous sound of the bass Charlie was playing mute on the bunk above them... Castiel was still absentmindedly massaging his freshly tatooed wrist.

When he awoke, the sun was filtering through the clouds enlightening the whole countryside they were crossing with a golden light who seemed brighter because of the grey steel sky he was seeing through the tourbus window. Castiel had moved toward the little table on wich he had put his feet, a book propped between his knees. He was nibbling one of his thumb nail and was turning the pages at a regular rhythm.

"I like this sort of weather" Dean said mid voice jst to test his ability to speak. Castiel noded slowly and raised his chin toward the bunk above, indicating to him to not wake Charlie.

"Me either. It's my favorite." he whispered drawing the curtain to reveal more of the window. Dean stood up cautiously (there was no day left without him bumping somewhere in that fucking bus and it was even worse for Sam) and he sat next to Castiel to kiss him on his cheek.

"I know, that's why I like it."

The other frowned. "I thought I had fell in love with Axel Rose, why do I find myself with a pale romantic copy of John Lenon ?" he joked.

"Cause it's the music that matters, not the musician" Dean answered taking his chin so he could kiss him in the neck.

Castiel had absolutely no available argument against it.

##

Castiel arranged Dean's black collar jacket and get up on his tiptoes to kiss him softly.

"I'll be waiting for you after the show. Maybe naked in your bed" he promised with a wheedling smile.

"You really want to turn me on before I come on stage ?" the singer asked.

"You're always turned on before going on stage"

Dean laughed. Across the backstage door, they were hearing the murmur of the crowd who was getting impatient and the familiar sound of Free Will's team who was finishing everything up.

Castiel slipped away and joined the pit of the concert hall. It wasn't the biggest where Free Will had performed, but the crowd was already huge and he step aside carefully from the crowd of young people who was agglutinating against the barriers lining the stage where roadies and some of hall employee were adjusting the cymbals of Sam's drums and were taping setlists on the floor.

He was taking vacations according to the group's tours, an accountant had this sort of benefit, and contrived to follow them as much as possible. It wasn't as much as he'd wanted. He could slip himself in Dean's bunk or hotel room, but he prefered the saety of his own apartment. Free Will was certainly not destined to be the most famous band of everlasting times, but their alaways increasing fanbase was starting to make him uncomfortable. More than once in the last mounths, he had been recognized in the street whereas he was nobody, only because fans had seen him hanging with the Winchester. He didn't liked that and was trying to be as discreet as possible.

The crowd continued to gather around him, making him zigzag toward a safe area where he was not likely to be rushed. Two girls, sitting on the floor were chatting at a rather low volume, their glass of beer laying between them. One was wearing a red bandana wich picked Castiel's attention. No strand of hair was to see, she was pale and thin but was smiling to her friend as if it was the best day of her life ever.

"You're Castiel ?" a voice asked behind him. He turned around, surprised and noded. "Can I have an autograph ?"

The two sitting girls on the floor stopped their chatting and Castiel lowered his eyes on the paper he was given with a big black marker.

"No er... I... Why an autograph I am... Well i'm not with the band, I'm here as a spectator !" he spluttered horribly embarrassed regretting not having anything to grind to deal with his hands and shoving away the pen he was given with a lot of insistence.

"Not with the band ? You sleep in the tourbus !" the girl who was talking to him and whom he was only looking at her hands answered. It would be too real, too intrusive to give this person a face. Castiel was terrified by what it was implying. It meant that at least one person had noticed his comings and goings, had watched him enough to know his name and where he slept. It meant she certainly had her ideas on his life, his relationship with the band. It meant for her, he existed because he knew Free Will. It was like being suddenly a famous people while being deprived of the right to exist as a person. He shook his head, lump in his throat.

"I am sorry... I don't think this is a good idea." he managed to say, certainly not loud enough to cover the crowd's hubbub. The girl had a despising sniff and exceeded him mumbling something unpleasant. Castiel saw her make her way through the compact crowd and disappear.

"Fucking jerk !" grunted one of the girl who was sitting on the floor. She raised her barely begun glass of beer toward Castiel. "Do you want some ? I almost didn't drink and you look like you need it"

The bandana girl noded. Castiel blinked once or twice and ended to kneel beside the two girls, grasping the glass with gratitude. The stale blond beer was mearly fresh but enough to untie his throat. The girls were looking at him with interest.

"Nice tatoo that you have" said the one with the red bandana.

"Thank you. And thank you for the beer. I'm Castiel."

"We suspected that" joked the brown, the one who had hairs. "I'm Brooklyn, she's Kate" she said helding her hand to him. Castiel shook it and held her back her mid empty glass of beer.

"Do you allow me to offer one to you after the show ? I don't like being beholden."

Brooklyn shook her head. "Isn't that what rapist do at concerts ? They offer drinks to girls, they drug them ad then we never see them again ?"

"Brook !" Kate protested. "Excuse her, I'm suspecting that she has a Tourette Syndrome for years, or an Asperger, she can't just not say what she's thinking !"

Castiel smiled and sat cross-legged beside the girls. "It doesn't bother me" he said "and I had no intention of drugging anyone ! I would certainly not recognize drung if I had it in front of me."

Brooklyn raised her eyebrows. "The girl who left said you sleep in the tourbus... was she wrong ?"

Castiel and Kate were staring at her, puzzled. "What ?" she defended herself "Don't tell me artists aren't given drug freely ! Or that tourbus aren't full of it !"

Castiel smiled. The lights went out and the crowd began to scream saving him from having to answer the embarrassing question of Brooklyn. They got up and he stood behind the girls, he was seeing over their shoulders, and anyway the show didn't really interested him. He had seen Dean sing dozens of times, sometimes for his only benefit. He had seen and heard Sam play drums countless hours. He knew exactly how Kevin stood behind his keyboard and when he would disappear behind the scenes to get his cello for the acoustic part of the concert. He had previously played Charlie's bass and knew how much it was heavy and that the shoulder strap nicked her neck every night. She wore turtlenecks for over a year, or large nail clamps to avoid this.

He knew the group. Each of their songs even the unpublished. He loved them all. But he knew these people as human beings. They were his friends, not stars in his eyes (or yes, maybe a little, but not only). He liked to drag every night in the howling mob and soak up their enthusiasm. He loved to hear Dean talk to them about their dreams and hear them react as if some in the public had some revelation of their lives.

He liked to remember the very first time he had heard this group. He was seventeen years old and after a year of research he had found the identity of the man who had given his bone marrow to save him. He had clicked on a web page and the music had triggered, making him jump. He had nearly close the tab, by reflex, but the sound was not unpleasant.

It was the very first time he had heard the voice of Dean Winchester. It was nothing special, it was low and soft and evoked much a forest walk that rabies hard rock for the young man that Castiel was at the time. He had closed his eyes for a second to hear the voice of someone who unknowingly had saved his life and had listened to the lyrics.

_« The Woman in White didn't mean any harm,_

_But she crushed my heart and broke my arms,_

_Took me to the river and tried to drown me._

_The Woman in White didn't mean any harm,_

_But I had to get rid of her before she kills me. »_

Later, he had learned that it was Sam who wrote the song after the accidental death of his girlfriend Jessica. The words continued to touch him a lot. Half of the fans chose to see it the story of a White Lady as in urban legend. The other half saw a sad love story and both interpretations were equally true.

Castiel had nicknamed the song "Leukemia" wich was making Dean cringe and Sam smile.

"As long as it pleases you guy..." the younger had said hearing the nickname the first time. "As long as it means something to you, everything's fine."

Unlike Dean, Sam was not possessive of his creations, he seemed genuinely happy if only people showed a little interest in his writings and compositions, the interpretation that people had mattered little to him.

They began nearly all their concerts with this song. Maybe it was a nod addressed to Castiel. Or may be a way to remember that for the Winchester brothers, all had begun that day specifically. With the death of Jessica. Castiel closed his eyes and listened to the crowd scream or be silent depending on the nights, let himself be carried away by the heavy sound of the bass, hypnotics keyboard notes, and Dean's voice singing softly.

_« I miss her like hell._

_She didn't mean to break me._

_But she did. »_

When he opened his eyes, clapping along with the audience routinely, the girl with red bandana was wiping her nose with her sleeve. He handed her a tissue she took a little surprised in the floating time between songs.

"I also cried the first time I heard it" he said. He had to shout to be heard above the noise of the crowd. He did not dare to look at the bandana or allude to it.

"For you either it is not a love story ?"

Castiel shook his head. "Not even from afar."

She smiled before turning her attention to the scene where Sam was assuring background music while Dean and Charlie were adjusting their instruments to the next song.

It was for this type of exchange, for the strange communion between people linked only by music that Castiel attended the Free Will concerts. It was like to be alive, but together.


	2. Chapter 2 : Crossroads

Chapter 2 : Crossroads ("This one is for Kate")

Two hours later, Castiel kept his promise and offered a new beer to Brooklyn while secretly sending a message to Dean. The bar he had chosen, a bit retired form the hall, was almost empty and the owner obviously didn't care about who his customers were. Brooklyn and Kate were chatting about the concert with big stars in their eyes when Dean slipped on the seat next to Castiel while making his whiskey slip on the table. He was still wearing his clothes show. Worn boots which one of them tripped over the young man's foot, a jean ripped at the knee, an adjusted white t-shirt and a shining leather jacket. That night, nobody had convinced him to outline his eyes of black and he wore only a single silver bracelet that Castiel wouldn't have guessed under the jacket sleeve if he hadn't helped him to attach it earlier in the evening.

"Good evening" He said with the smile he reserved for the fans and the journalists. He held out his hands toward the two girls in front of him. They stopped chatting immediately and shyly shook his fingertips. Castiel didn't understand how the singer's green eyes could still shine of excitement and joy after the show as himself was tired and hungry. This was undoubtedly the reason why Dean was the band leader, for his strange capacity to inspire admiration whatever he did, and his gift to do that with the kind of smiles that enlightened the day of the people he met. Whatever his state of tiredness, Dean didn't need to force himself to be kind and charming, to grant his whole attention toward the people whom he was speaking to like they were the most important persons of the world. That was what made him a leader and a star.

Castiel listened to him converse with the two girls, asking them if they would attend to other shows. He watched him raise his hand toward Kate's head and brush the bandana with his fingertips.

"Can I ?" He asked softly. She nodded obviously unable to say a single word and he slid the cloth of her nearly bald head, revealing a dirty blond fine down. She instinctively pulled her head in her shoulders.

Castiel had a lump in his throat and Brooklyn was looking at the bottom of her beer without saying anything. Dean was still staring at Kate and his was smiling softly. He stood up and leaned over to hug her over the table. Surprised, she awkwardly clung to his leather jacket that crunched under her fingernails.

Castiel did not hear what he whispered in her ear, but one way or another he knew it was exactly the words that Kate needed to hear. Dean had this amazing ability to know exactly what to say at the right moment to produce the desired effect in the people he talked to. Castiel was fascinated to see him blush every time a fan tried an approach, just to flirt with her the next second, a nod, a smile, a touch of fingertips on the cheek... Because this was exactly what was expected of him.

Once, Sam had asked him if he didn't bother to see his boyfriend (what a strange way to name him !) flirting with everyone. Castiel had smiled and shrugged. "The night, it's to me that he returns. So it does not bother me" he had responded.

Dean let Kate and took the bandana which he considered half a second before looking up to Castiel.

"You got a pen ?"

Castiel handed him a marker that he always carried with him for some time now and Dean scribbled something on the bandana he waved to dry the ink before reattaching it around the head of Kate.

"Do you need a ride home ?" he asked the girls.

They shook their heads. "Our motel is just nearby"

"Take care of you then"

Dean alawys looked after his comings in and out. He ostensibly took Castiel's hand and pulled the younger toward him to lead him out. The two girls hadn't stopped smiling.

The young man followed him stumbling, puzzled. "Are you aware of the fact that you just threw our relationship to the face of two fans ?" he grumbled before rushing into the cab with him.

Dean handed a paper on which he had written the address of their hotel to the driver, and leaned against the back of the seat.

"I don't think they'll tell anyone"

Castiel didn't think they would either, to be honest. A tinted window was separating them from the driver, so he took the opportunity to rest his head on Dean's shoulder. The leather jacket was cold under his cheek.

It was late when they presented themselves at the reception desk of the hotel.

"That was not exactly the kind of evening I had planned" the young man apologised while following the singer onto his room. Dean shrugged and closed the door behind him.

"There will be other evenings" he said.

The room was small and cozy. Someone (probably Sam) had brought Dean's suitcase, Castiel's backpack was already stored in the small wall cupboard set into the wall separating the bedroom from the bathroom. He sat on the bed and watched Dean toss the suitcase before opening it to fish a more comfortable outfit. He was remembering the time when the two brothers transported all their possessions in the trunk of an old car, sold since. When they had begun to have success and need to tour more and longer, he had offered the suitcase to Dean. It was in big black canvas originally but the singer had sewn patch big points each state in which he passed. There were still missing some of wich Hawaï and Alaska but he hoped to remedy this one day. Over the months to fold and unfold the machine, Dean had eventually acquired an impressive dexterity in suitcase storage term. He calculated exactly what he would need : a pair of jeans every five days, and as many t-shirts or shirts, socks and underwear that day between two hotels equipped with a washing machine. He had compartmented the suitcase in two, a clean part, and a dirty part plus a waterproof bag for toiletries.

Castiel would not have been surprised to discover did checklists to be sure not to forget anything (Kevin did and Dean had copied much of his travel routine on him).

Another bag, which remained in the tourbus, contained his stage clothes. Always the same. More or less threadbare jeans, white tops, various black leather jackets that Dean was quick to remove as soon that there was no more fan to see him.

Castiel looked at him undress, as always amazed by the way the man he had in front of him was changing as he got rid of his clothes as so many layers to his rockstar character. It was always the same ritual. First the jacket he slid from his shoulders before drawing the end of the sleeves to slide it down his tattooed arms. His shoulders sagged slightly as if they no longer see the point of staying tonic without the weight of the leather. Then the t-shirt he passed over his head, ruining his hair carefully studied, he then passed a hand through his short hair and scratched his head until they were sufficiently disordered to his liking. Castiel looked the tattoos disappear under an old Led Zeppelin shirt and the delicate way Dean smoothed the hem before unbuttoning his jeans and extricate one leg after the other after having removed the boots of a sharp movement foot.

It was always the same ritual at the end of which there wasn't generally much left of the star apart tattoos, piercings, and sometimes his eyes outlined in black. But not tonight. Tonight there was just a tired man who climbed on the bed next to Castiel and wrapped his arms around the waist of his lover, sighing contentedly, the head resting on his belly.

Castiel automatically put his hand on the skull of Dean, rolling the brown strands between his fingers to remove the last traces of gel.

"You think they'll come back ?" Dean asked softly, eyes closed.

"Brooklyn and Kate ?"

"That's their names ?"

"Yes. And yes, I believe they will come back."

Dean smiled. "They look like great girls. Brave ones."

Castiel nodded. For a while they were silent, Dean began to fall asleep. Castiel turned the TV on, looking in vain for something interesting to watch.

"Were you as thin and pale ? Than Kate ? I mean before."

Dean sat up on his elbows, his face close enough to Castiel's to completely hide him television at the footboard. The black haired nodded.

"I was worse. My mother must still have some photos of the period. I had lost all my hair and for two months I lived in a sterile bubble."

Dean sat on the bed completely, thoughtful, ran a hand through hair Castiel, twisting a lock of black hair between his fingers, trying to imagine his lover being bald.

"How did you hang on ?" He asked. "I think I would die if I was locked for months, if I was sick for so long, if I could see myself wither away slowly ..."

Castiel shrugged.

"Survival instinct. Humans are very difficult to kill, you know. As soon as you're told that you are doomed unless a miracle happens, you begin to pray for a miracle."

Dean smiled and crawled on the bed to get closer to him.

"I was your miracle then ?"

Castiel nodded. "You still are." He kissed him gently. Dean didn't kiss the same way when it was just him, or when he had slipped into the character of the leader of Free Will. Castiel often made fun of him by calling him "Fearless Leader" when the singer put on his black jacket, as if there were two different people in his body. Dean kissed him passionately and tenderly. His hands gently posed on the shoulders of Castiel went back on his neck where they settled for the time of the kiss before coming twitched in his hair or down along his arms, his back, hot and rough against his skin.

"Do you know why Titanic is my favorite movie ?" Castiel asked gently, playing with the cuffs of the shirt Dean, revealing the great black lily he had tattooed on his shoulder, surrounded by flames that ran it along his shoulder blade. The singer shook his head, his forehead pressed against his lover's.

"Because you're romantic like a girl?" He teased.

"Because Jack saved Rose, in every possible way, just like you saved me."

"I've done nothing Cas." Dean sighed, moving away from him to settle on his side of the bed, propping his shoulders against the wall, a pillow slid behind his back. "I gave my bone marrow when I was twenty-one, I didn't even know what I was doing. I remind you that it was just an excuse to skip class !"

It was a discussion they had already had several times and Castiel had never gone beyond that in their three-year relationship. But tonight, he saw the little red bandana and skinny arms Kate compared muscular arms tattooed Dean. He imagined them melted by disease, the faded ink, soiled by the treatments. He slipped his hand into Dean's who gently pressed it.

"Me, when I was twenty-one, I wanted to kill myself."

Dean had a violent jolt that shook the bed. "You never told me that."

Castiel shrugged.

"I thought I had a relapse. I woke up one morning burning with fever, vomiting everything I swallowed, I had not felt as bad for years. I went to the hospital and they kept me, made me pass a series of tests and examinations. I thought leukemia was returning."

"Three years after transplantation ?"

Castiel nodded. "It happens, it's rare but it happens. And I refused to live that again. The unbearable pain all the time, being sick all the time, doctors's pitying gazes, my mother who refrains from crying... I would rather have died than going through that again. I forbade everyone to give me the test results and I planned how I wanted to leave."

Dean had tight throat, he knew that the story ended well, it necessarily finished well as Castiel was there to tell, but it did not please him yet. The young man had closed his eyes, his head wedged against the wall as if seeing nothing made his memories more bearable. Or maybe he just wanted to avoid eye contact with Dean during his confession.

"And then ?"

"After I listened to "_Dad is on a hunting trip_". I knew it was you who sang, the person who had saved me the first time. This CD is one hour and thirty six minutes. I listened to it loop all night. I already knew every song by heart, but I imagine it must be in a certain mood for great revelations. I cried every time "_My soul for his_" began and also at every chorus of "_Hellhounds_". The next day, I asked the test results, took the treatment they gave me and I decided not to die, at least not untill I would have thanked you for my second life."

"Why did you never told me ?" Dean asked softly. Castiel shrugged.

"I don't know. It was never the right time, but ... tonight, seeing Kate, I hoped very much that you could save her as you saved me. That your music might give her the strength to wake up one more morning to continue to listen to it."

This time, Castiel had turned his eyes to him. He had that fixed and profound gaze that had made Dean uncomfortablethe first time, as if the blue eyes were probing too deeply his soul in search of something too great and heroic which the singer knew he was lacking. He wasn't a hero whatever his lover thought.

"I don't have this power Cas. My music is not good enough to save people."

"Yet it saved me."

"It saved you because you think you owe me your second life. It's different."

Castiel ran his hand on the bit raspy cheek of Dean as to convince or silence him.

"I only do songs. You're wrong if you think I'm some kind of hero to these people" He said again.

Castiel took his face in both hands to force him to look at him.

"Songs that saved me! And if they can save just one other person, just one Kate... Don't you think this is a good reason enough to be proud ?"

Dean couldnn't move his head, failling that, he lowered his eyelids. Castiel's thumb brushed the piercing above his cheekbone. "Listening to your songs taught me what free will, self-determination is. I still think that this is something for which you have to fight. And I still think that this is something you should be proud of. Something that is worth fighting."

Dean nodded slowly, sliding his rough chin in the palm of Castiel's hand to drop a kiss.

"Remind me that when I'll doubt again." He said softly.

"Count on me" Castiel said. He slipped under the sheets without bothering to take off more than his sneakers. Dean slid against his chest, his arms around the waist of the young man and put his head on Castiel's chest, just below the small scar near his collarbone. Years earlier, before being declared "in remission", the young man had tattooed a sentence whose real meaning had so far escaped the singer. "_Safe and Sound_". This meant more than simply "I am healed" wich was his response every time he was asked about it's meaning. It meant "I am healed and it is the music that saved me" Dean understood it only tonight. He closed his eyes, squeezing his lover against him, his head just above his heart so he could hear the steady beat between two inspirations of the younger. It was his favorite sleeping position for years, to the point that he sometimes had trouble getting to sleep when they were separated. The singer found a film he had already seen eight times on TV, put a hand on Castiel's shoulder and fell asleep shortly after him. He dreamed of a huge crowd jumping in the air to the beat of the music. It was his favorite dream.

##

There was always an adrenaline rush before going on stage, a kind of communicative energy that made them all want to hop on their way to the murmur of the crowd muffled by distance. Sam was playing with his drumsticks on every flat surface, sometimes on Kevin's shoulders until the young man, annoyed, pushes him back. Dean was cracking his knuckles until the other three were begging him to stop. Charlie was turning her plectrum in her fingers, pacing in the poorly lit backstage. Once she had tripped over a cable and had nearly start a fire. Kevin was reading. Generally the same book for a long time because he could never remember the pages that he had read through before going on stage. Their blood seemed hotter them every minute, and the excitement always won on them. They could perform on a large or a small stage, they could be only the four of them or being accompanied by an orchestra (it had happened only once and it was "awesome" in Dean's words), excitement was the same. As a sun which bloomed in the pit of their stomachs.

They always came on stage in the same order. First Sam who settled behind his drums and greeted Kevin with a continuous drum roll, a hit on a cymbal when the young man reached his keyboard. Fans loved Kevin, his big smile and the big square glasses he wore leaving the scene to relieve his tired eyes by the light spots. Both began to play a minute to find the rhythm on which Charlie came on stage. She was small compared to them and sometimes her coming was slightly unnoticed until a spot illuminates her red hair and green bass. Every fan knew exactly the name she had given to her custom-made instrument, but no one knew why. Often, when Sam and her were bored, they browsed on fan forums (their favorite pseudo was "Moose205") to read the most extravagant theories on Charlie's bass. As soon as the light went on, she began to play and at this time the public knew that everyone was ready for Dean's coming.

And it was usually not even the best moment of the evening. There were nights like that where everything went perfectly. They did not need to force themselves to connect with the public, there were nights when they felt driven by the grace and the music and everything was perfect.

They smiled at each other out of scene, returning all four together for the callback. On very rare occasions for a second callback.

They smiled and laughed in the backstage illuminated by the side of the room lights which came back on after the concert. Kevin left first to go on a walkabout while Sam supervised the removal and storage of his drums leaving only Dean and Charlie. The young woman played with her sore shoulders, massaging her neck.

"I take them and you eclipses ?" She kindly suggested.

Dean nodded and kissed her temple. "It doesn't bother you ?"

"We won't be at the hotel before an hour anyway, and you covered us enough Dorothy and me. We owe you that much."

It was a habit they had taken becoming famous. When Free Will consisted only of Dean and Sam, it was less difficult to retain their privacy for them. Now they had to cover each other alternately to keep for themselves what they considered as belonging to the intimate and that celebrity tended to remove from them.

They both eluded personal questions, and often, they made arrangements to occupy the fans for one of them can slip away quietly.

Dean waited for Charlie to be surrounded by a handful of fans to slip away discreetly and slip into a taxi.

The hotel room was oddly silent when he entered it. In the darkness, he discerned only the shape of Castiel sitting on the bed, dimly lit by the street light that passed through the half-open window.

"Is something wrong ?" He asked, approaching him. He knelt before his lover and put his hands on his thighs, trying to look in the same direction as him. Castiel had his phone between his knees and was sniffing uncontrollably.

"She's dead"

"Who ?"

"Kate... The bandana girl... She's dead !"

Castiel looked up at him and Dean saw that he had cried, was still crying in fact. He clenched his hands on his lover's thighs. He'd been unaware that Castiel had kept in touch with the young girl met a few weeks earlier. He could only imagine the exchange of SMS, and then, finally, after a long silence, the phone beeping or ringing. And probably an unknown voice on the phone or Brooklyn's announcing the death of Kate. It was tragic in itself, and Dean felt bad to take the news with as much detachment. But he didn't know the girl, not really. However, seeing Castiel cry that was what he endured least. It thankfully almost never happened. He straightened as he could to hold him in his arms despite their position, then he climbed on the bed and sat with him. Castiel clung to his jacket as a lifeline and was frankly sobbing now. As if he had waited for Dean to indulge in his sorrow. "She was only seventeen" he said between sniffles.

Dean had nothing to answer. No way to calm the distress of his lover. He was understanding it. Castiel couldn't watch the medical tv shows, cut the movies when a character found himself in hospital... and he was oddly attached to this kid he was talking about almost every day. Probably because he understood what she was crossing, probably because he recognized himself in her.

"It's okay..." Dean whispered, cradling him gently. "It's going to be ok..." He didn't know what else to say.

He waited until the sobs of the other are a little calmed down, just enough for him to hear his voice over the sound of his sniffles, and he began to sing. It was probably not the most appropriate song, but it was Castiel's favorite.

_"Crossroads told me the story_

_Of a man who sacrified himself for his son_

_I wish someone would love me_

_I wish someone would save me from my run_"

He felt the young man begin to relax, he imagined his eyelashes stooping on his cheek as he listened to the words he knew by heart. Castiel knew by heart every song of his. He found meanings that Dean had never had in mind when writing. Yet they were all true.

"_There is someone I love more than anything_

_I would trade my soul for his_

_I would go to hell swinging_

_Just to see one more smile of his_"

Castiel was still sniffling, but less loudly now and he didn't hung so much to Dean's jacket. He was listening to the sound of his clothes which slipped on his chest with each breath and to the sound of his low voice in his chest. It was like falling asleep and hearing the sounds of the outside world distorted and incomprehensible. He didn't understand the words, but he knew them by heart so much that it seemed they were from him. It was just a song that would not bring back the dead, but it was all what Dean had to offer at the moment.

"_But I'm just a guy_

_With only my shattered soul to sell_

_And I'm crying in my bloody hands at night_

_I'm not the one who'll make you smile again_"

Castiel began to hum the last verse together with Dean, he had a slightly broken voice through because of his tears, but neither cared. Gradually the comfort and warmth of the singer's arm calmed the young man, cradling him away from his grief as if he had the power to fight all the pain of the world. Castiel tended to believe that it was true, that as long as Dean would be there to comfort him, he could endure anything.

"_Crossroads now tells a story_

_'bout a man who traded his soul for his soulmate_

_And they wander together happily_

_Crossroad demon gave them one year to share_"

Dean stopped singing, just listening to Castiel's scratchy voice who whispered the last words.

"_I wish someone would love me that much. I wish someone would save me_"

It was not much. Nothing but a song written years earlier and on which Castiel had put his own interpretation, his own feelings.

But it was all what Dean had to offer and curiously, it was enough. A few minutes later Castiel was asleep, tight against his lover as a confident kitten.

##

The next evening, Free Will performed in a smaller room than the day before, an almost intimate committee where they felt more comfortable. Dean searched Castiel with his eyes but didn't find him, yet he knew he was in the room. He smiled at a few girls in the front row. One of them had the symbol of the band tattooed on the wrist, a pentacle in a sun. What drove people to do that ? His tattoos all meant something important for him. The lily on his shoulder, it was his mother dead so long ago that today he needed a photo and a brief effort to see her face. The rose that wrapped around his left wrist ? Sammy. The crossed revolvers in the small of his back ? He avoided to think of it. But that girl, why get a tattoo of a rock band symbol ? A symbol invented caught in two different books in a library in California years earlier.

Maybe Castiel was right. Maybe what he was doing was important, at least for one or two person. Maybe it was more than distraction. After all, if Sam and he told their pathes in their songs, why refuse the idea that they find echoes in other people? They were not so special.

All these thoughts jostled in his head at the same second, making the smile. Behind him, Sam called him to order with a clearly annoyed drumroll. He perched himself on a high stool that had been brought to him, stalled his guitar on his lap and leaned toward the microphone.

"This one is for Kate"

He cleared his throat while behind him Sam began a haunting rhythm.

"_What doesn't kill me should try harder,_

_What wants to burry me should think better,_

_'cos I'm a warrior,_

_I save people, I save lifes, I'm a hero_"

He had his eyes closed, impregnated with music. He imagined Castiel in the room, his eyes closed as he always did when he heard him sing, and he smiled. Others person closed their eyes, slowly swaying to the rhythm of the song carried by Charlie's bass which predominated. They would ask who was Kate. The next day, Sam and Charlie would find on forums tens of assumptions. The most common would probably be that Kate would be an acquaintance of the group. Or even his girlfriend. Brooklyn would probably understand. He didn't know if she was in the audience or if she would hear of this dedication someday, but it was not really for her that he was singing it, beside he didn't know if he was addressing to Castiel or to himself.

"_Been through hell and back,_

_So pull the trigger,_

_Try and hit me harder,_

_But one day I'll be back,_

_I save people, I save lifes, I'm a hero_"

He smiled, thinking between two words, that for once, he wasn't playing the Fearless Leader that he represented on stage. He was Dean Winchester and sang his own feelings, not those of a stage character.

"_I'm a freaking hero_"

He was really thinking that way. And it was thanks to Castiel.


	3. Chapter 3 : Stray Cat

Chapitre 3 : Stray Cat

Seeing Charlie put on her stage clothes was one of Dorothy's favorite sight.

First this implied that the bassist was naked, wich in itself was one of the good things of life (about tied with bacon and sunrises on Monument Valley). And this required from the young woman incessant comings and goings between her suitcase and the bathroom. First in underwear then in pants, skirt, pants again before she starts to put on a t-shirt or shirt, get changed, and start all from the beginning again. This amused Dorothy who could recognize her clothes to touch, to dress in the dark and still feel perfectly at ease in all circumstances. It was not something to which she attached a disproportionate importance, and to drive a bus all day in, she did not usually need to make outfit efforts. But to Charlie, the challenge was different.

Being labeled "The Group Girl" automatically put her away in a certain category of people she wanted to separate herself from, or at least not to end up trapped in. Often, reading one of their interviews or an article about the group, she sighed she had not signed on to be their feminine contrast.

She had fully explained to Dorothy why she loved playing bass. This was not only because of the sound, of the deep vibrations of the instrument that seemed to echo all the cells of the body. It was also because of its place in music.

"You see, the guitar is the guitar is the melodic line that speaks to the head. It's the one which tells the song. The drums, it takes you to the chest, it beats inside you as your heart. This is what makes the ground shake and resonate through your body. The bass... The bass speaks to you deep in the belly, it's the one who twists your guts even when you do not pay attention, it is that which maintains the whole song, giving it depth and background. You don't see it and yet it is essential."

"So the bass is the sexual part of the music ?" Dorothy had asked in an extremely serious tone. Charlie had nodded vigorously. It was a year ago at the start of the tour, the first time they had shared a hotel room. Shortly before they had begun to share the same bed.

Charlie took great care of her image and tonight she had a message to deliver. The Internet, where she killed most of her time between concerts, regularly informed her of the most idiotic laws of the states they crossed. She shared it with them at any time of day or night and that morning she had stopped on the prohibition for women to wear trousers in Tucson. Dorothy was convinced that this law had a logical origin but Charlie had not wanted to hear about it. She had decided to apply the law litteraly and nobody in the world except maybe Dean could not have made her change her mind. Sam and Kevin had tried without success until the drummer takes his friend's shoulders.

"After all" Had he said "Nobody will complain to see a half-naked girl on stage."

Charlie had thrown her PC mouse in his face, laughing. But she had held to her decision and therefore was walking around in the hotel room wearing only a black bodysuit and fishnet stockings. All leaving relatively little to the imagination or to any underwear, fact that Dorothy should have not find so attractive. Lying on the bed, the woman was wondering if Charlie's birthday could be a sufficient pretext for an unrestrained sex party later in the evening. Not that they needed a pretext now, but still.

Someone knocked on the door and Charlie yelled from the bathroom where she had obviously blinded one of her eyes with her mascara brush. Dorothy chuckled and got up to open to Dean and Castiel, the first carrying in his arms a large wrapped box with a pink paper that would displease the bassist.

"Who's this ?"

"Batman and Robin." Dean replied by putting the gift on a twin bed of the room. "You two manage to fit in oone of those things ?" He asked to Dorothy. The young woman shrugged.

"And you ?" She retorted.

"Oh yes !" Castiel replied when a second shot at the door announced the arrival of Sam and Kevin, carrying, them a bottle of champagne.

Charlie emerged from the bathroom, a very red eye being too rubbed after the macara attack.

"Happy Birthday !" Sam shouted opening his arms, the champagne bottle passing dangerously close to Castiel who dodged awkwardly. Charlie smiled and put one of her arm around the waist of the young man.

"We don't wait 'til after the show ?"

Kevin shook his head before taking the bottle from Sam. "We'll start over again after. It's been a while since we didn't play without being worse for wear"

"Drunk Kev, the word you're looking for is drunk !" Sam intervented dropping himself on the bed beside Dorothy and the gift box. He was shirtless under a brown pullover with the Stanford emblem and was wearing jeans so old it should had been sold before he was even born. From under the bed he pulled Charlie's suitcase to go through her jewels and accessories until he found a leather collar he handed to Dorothy so she could tie it on him.

"There's only the leash missing" Dean teased. Sam had a huge grin.

"Are you offering ?"

"You're disgusting" The older sighed sitting on the opposit bed, watching with a worried look Kevin's tribulations who was attempting to open the bottle. "And you, you're going to be dead sick" He told Charlie watching her naked legs.

"I'll wear a jacket" She replicated sitting beside him to unwrap her gift. Through the fishnet holes, he could see her nails painted in red and the silver anckle chain she hadn't put off since he knew her. A gift from Castiel two years ago. A little lucky angel charm dangling permanently.

The young woman emitted a long whistle opening the box, removing the tissue paper covering the shiny red leather boots. She turned them in her hands, enjoying the length of the rod, the smell of new leather and the shoes's color of fresh blood. They were all watching, enjoying the smile that slowly drew on her lips.

"You just gave me Batwoman's shoes ?"

"Yeup" Dean said.

"Made to measure" Castiel added.

"Based on one of Kevin's drawing" Sam said, handing her a pair of socks that Charlie pulled feverishly before dragging her feet in the boots, not really surprised to find them perfectly fitting. She did not know by what miracle they had managed to find the measures of her feet (and strongly suspected Dorothy being involved !) but she didn't questionned herself for too long. The boots were perfect and she refused therefore to remove them. Kevin handed her the bottle of champagne she took a swig from the neck before handing it to Dean.

"Happy Birthday, Red" Dorothy said by placing a kiss on her cheek.

It was not the real date of Charlie's birthday, they all knew it. But it was the day that she had adopted as the one where she was born into her second life, the most important to her. They respected this. And tonight, it was a special evening. This would not be a concert like any other.

As they went along, it became a habit to do something special during their respective birthdays.

She remembered the day, exactly two years ago when she had met them.

It was raining that day. This was why the song that closed exceptionally the acoustic session began with a stormy noise.

"_I found a stray cat wandering outside in the street,_

_She hissed at me and bared her teeth ,_

_She clawed at my skin and stuck at my feet,_

_Like she wouldn't let go of me_"

Two years earlier.

The guy had chose a bad day to attempt to approach her. He had taken a bag in the face and had walked away, holding his face with both hands, shouting insults.

It had begun to rain. She had lost the hood of her coffee to go now cold and disgusting. She threw it into a trash can and wrapped her arms around her, she had no umbrella and besides, she had sore feet. She ignored the ringing of her cell for the fifth time. If she had bothered she would have been able to trace the path of the rumor of her dismissal. From her boss's secretary at the coffee machine, from a colleague to another, from a gossip to a talkative... gradually Charlie Bradbury's nervous breakdown would become a legend. The kind of horror story told to new employees to teach them to keep within the framework and not making waves.

She had not realized she had leaned against a wall or that she had let herself slip to the ground, her head in her hands in the relative safety of a roof panel that protected her a bit from the rain. She would have give anything for that day to finish.

"Hey ? Are you okay ?"

She raised her head ready to strike again but the man who watched her was crouched close to her and held out his arm to protect her under a large pink umbrella. She wiped her nose, shaking her head and, curiously, giggled, looking up toward the pink spot lined with frilly which hid the black sky to her. The other smiled, causing his very green eyes to wrinckle. He was nibbling a silver ring he had in his lower lip, looking puzzled.

"What are you doing all alone in the rain ?"

"I don't know" She answered. She believed he would think she was drugged or drunk when it was only five o'clock in the afternoon. But he just sighed and extended a hand holding a crumpled and soaked paper bag.

"Come inside, you're making me feel cold, wet like this"

Years later when she was asked how all had begun, she always thought back to that moment. The exact moment she had sold her soul to Dean Winchester as she accepted his hand to help her up. The only person from the street to have stopped near a wet girl to offer her a refuge.

She had followed her inside the building against which she was leaning against. She had a while to understand that it was a recording studio and it was mostly by seeing a guy with long hair playing drums behind glass she had made the connection. There was a control console under the large window in the room where the man took her as well as a sofa, armchairs and a coffee table very close to each other behind the seat of the technician who was recording the sound of the drums. Two brown boys were sitting around the table overflowing with reliefs of food and coffee cups.

"I have company !"

"A strait cat again ?" One of the boys asked. He had beautiful blue eyes and seemed a little "out of" the studio with his barely wrinkled suit whose he had removed the jacket, distinctly laid on the back of his chair.

"Nope, just someone who'd need a hot thing to drink." Replied the man with green eyes. Charlie felt uncomfortable and her wet clothes began to make her cold. "We wouldn't have a towel or something?" He asked, still tucking his wet umbrella.

"It's a studio here, not a daycare !" The technician grumbled removing his headphones, turning in his chair to shoot a stern look on the three others. He stood up and held out his hand to the girl. "I'm Bobby Singer"

"Charlie. Charlie Bradbury." She articulated laboriously squeezing his hand.

The blue-eyed boy handed her a coffee which she vaguely wondered where it emerged from. "I Castiel, I'm here as a tourist."

"Kevin." Introduced himself the second boy in the room raising a hand. He had asian features, a spacer in one ear and a cello carefully stored in a case next to him at the end of the couch.

"Dean." Said the man with green eyes pointing himself from the thumb. "The moose behind the glass is my brother, Sam."

"The moose says fuck you !" Sam grumbled coming out of the recording room, stretching his long arms above his head to be able to hang on to the door frame and smiling at Charlie.

That was how she had met the four boys. On a rainy day. And she had never left.

"_I found a stray cat, far away from home_

_She curled on my pillow and ate my food,_

_She told us stories of a faraway kingdom_

_Like we were the only ones who understood_"

Kevin's cello began to reel off his deep and slow notes, accompanied by Sam's muffled drum which maintained a steady, hypnotic rhythm. Charlie clenched fingers on her borrowed guitar. She was not used to the instrument, and had only learned to play the necessary bars for this song, the weight of her bass was lacking, a bit like if her balance point had been removed. Two years earlier after eating donuts, having a little dried and drinking coffee, she had attended her first recording session. Without anyone had asked questions. Without even Bobby asks why a girl dripping wet from the rain had let herself invite by a stranger. As if it was normal for them to retrieve stray cats found in the rain. As if it was normal that Sam had put an arm around her shoulders two hours later and asked her if she knew where to sleep at night.

"She won't sleep with you, pervert !" Kevin had grunted, throwing him the bag of donuts empty and crumpled into a ball to the face.

"I'm not ... I have an apartment in fifteen minutes by." Charlie had mumbled.

"Need a taxi ?" Sam looked concerned.

Seeing him the first time, she had recoiled. He was very tall and the drums alone could not be responsible for the muscles in his arms. He was wearing a white tank top that had seen better days and showed an impressive amount of tattoos. All his left arm was a huge bunch of colorful flowers. She had thought that someone wearing as proudly as many colors and petals could not be inherently evil.

She had shook her head. "It's gonna be okay"

"That's what people say when they feel bad but do not dare talk about it." Sam had said.

And Charlie began to cry. Like that, suddenly, without harbinger, plunging the entire studio in a awkward silence only broken by the sound of her sobs. She had felt an arm go around her and Sam approach his chest to rock her. None of the five men had said anything.

In retrospect, it was probably because each of them knew there were no words to put on a great distress. No word of comfort that was effective. And that didn't matter, after all, why she was crying. She hadn't return home that night. Three days later, she was still wandering in the small apartment of the Winchester, in jeans loan from Kevin wich was still too big for her, and an old shirt of Dean which could have been a dress for her. A month later, a bass was delivered to the apartment she had finally return. The card that came with it was signed by Dean, Sam and Kevin.

"If you need a job, we need a bassist"

"_Stray cat had a lot of demons,_

_She was fighting alone and the rain was pouring,_

_We nursed her into oblivion,_

_Until we could see her smile and hear her laughing_"

The song was soft and rhythmic, Dean singing eyes closed, automatically playing the simple chords that accompanied the words evoking the time they had spent together.

That first evening when she had refused to talk to them about her problems. After all, one does not entrusted to foreigners like this. The first days when she had refuged herself, in the early morning on the Winchester's couch, a bass on her knees she had began to play muted so she wouldn't wake them. She had only stopped by seeing Dean coming into the living room smiling. His eyes were dwarfed by sleep and his hair were tousled.

"Who taught you ?"

"No one" She replied with her head bent on the instrument. "I found the bass of my favorite band on Ebay a few years ago... I took some courses, the rest... I've always said bass sounds soothe the soul."

"Does that work ?"

"A bit, yes"

He had made her coffee and toast. She had wondered if he did that with all the stray cats he encountered. She had only had her answer much later as a nod from Kevin. "Only those who are special. The other cats, he kicks them."

A long time after with the help of many beers, the two brothers had asked her what had happened the day they had met. She had told them, always with the help of alcohol. Told the car accident that took her father and plunged her mother into a coma when she was twelve. Told the wandering during her late teens and how she would sneak into the hospital to read stories to her mother. Told the day she had decided to end the medical assistance. How she had woken up that morning with the sensation of drowning in her own saliva. How a small remark from her boss had made her explode. How she had been fired the day of the death of the last person on earth she cared about.

They hadn't taken her in their arms this time. They had handed her a new beer and then another until she was drunk, then they had taken her back to the tourbus and had tucked her in her bunk. They had never talked about it again because some secrets, some pains aren't to share. Yet, often, one or the other clutched her shoulder when they saw her sad or thoughtful.

"_Stray cat is like the little sister_

_I never wanted_

_Stray cat made me wonder_

_Is life even real ?_"

Dean had refused she heard the song before tonight and he had been wrong. Because she wanted to laugh and cry. Wanted to take him in her arms and call him an idiot. She wanted him to shut, to not reveal it to any fans and yet, there was nothing more important than sharing it with them. Free Will was a blended family made of broken people who supported each othe. People who listened, who came to their concerts were like them somehow. Although the lyrics were vague, and probably wouldn't evoke much to the fans. But the four knew who she was, the meaning behind every word of Dean and the smiles he threw to her between verses.

"_She plays queen and crowned me king_

_Of a faraway kingdom which I know nothing_

_And she thinks we're all wariors and heroes_

_When I though we were all survivors and zeros_"

Charlie smiled, tried to focus on her guitar chords but she was too filled with emotion to know if she was playing correctly or not. She had removed her headset and her hearing protections to hear Dean singing. She was close enough to discern the air rattling in his throat when he breathed, the rustling of his mouth on the mic, yet she heard his voice amplified a hundred times by the speakers around them. It was like two distinct people were talking about her to a few hundreds of strangers.

"_She has demons sitting on her shoulder_

_Just like me_

_But she fight everyday harder_

_And she's stuck with me_

_Because I love her_

_And I hope she loves me_."

The last cello notes died away half a second after Dean's voice. Nobody in the room could see Charlie's eyes even though the light was pointed at her, but everyone could see that she was crying. She had stopped playing after missing several notes but nobody had paid attention. Sniffing, she bent over to pick up the microphone.

"I love you" She said as clearly as she could. She had no time to put the microphone away before sniffing again, triggering some laughter in the audience. Dean nodded gently, smiling.

"I know" He whispered just loud enough for only her to hear.

When they left the stage, in the backstages, she hugged him in her arms.

For a long time.

##

"Hey" Sam said tending a helping hand to retain an amp that threatened to fall from the sack truck on which it was.

"Hey" Replied the girl with a big smile. She had long eyelashes and very pronounced cheekbones and very high. "Thank You"

Sam smiled and gently pushed the amp to stabilize it. "Are you new ?"

She nodded. "Obviously"

He held out his hand. "I'm Sam"

"Madison" She answered, shaking his hand. "Any idea where these babies are supposed to go, sir ?" She asked, pointing the crates from the chin. Sam told her in which hardware truck to store the amp then gave her specific instructions on the handling of his drums. Madison smiled gently watching him unscrew a cymbal from its shelf and place it in a storage box.

"Is it precious ?"

Sam nodded touching the bass drum from the tip of the phalanges. "It cost me two years of savings, the first who damage it..." He didn't finish his sentence, just shook his head and smiled at the young woman. "I'll show you how to take care of it, the other roadies already know the procedure. Then I promise I won't get under your feet, it's just that ... I care about it."

Madison nodded. She almost regretted not having a notebook on her to write down instructions, but remove the drums did not require special diploma and the major advice (repeated at least thirty times by Sam) was to treat it with gentleness.

"It's silly you tap on it for hours every day !"

"This is why you need to treat it carefully when I'm not there." Sam smiled. "And there's no "sir" here. Civilities are reserved for opera and classical music"

Madison chuckled unscrewing one of the attachments of the little boxes Sam had designated as the "toms". "The rock does not tolerate courtesy ?"

"Courtesy ? It's no longer fashionable since the Middle Ages ! It's even been years since I've heard that word." Sam said, amused.

She looked at him puzzled. She did not expected him to place courtesy in the good time, nor even him to know exactly where the term came. He smiled and leaned over a box of equipment, arms crossed in front of him.

"What ? That surprises you that a guy who makes music has also an education ?" He teased, rolling the Floor Tom from front to back.

She felt herself blush from embarrassment without any good reason and looked down. "It shouldn't but... Yeah, a little."

Sam just smiled, his long hair fell before his eyes and he had to watch her fight with a pedal's attachment through his wisps.

"Do I have to conclude that the rock is for coarse characters ?" Madison asked.

Sam started to laugh. He had dimples and a little childish glint in his eyes that made her smile.

"And the cheeky girls." He replied, nodding.

"I guess neither of us is really in his propper place then ?" She put the attachment in place and Sam told her the order in which store the toms.

"We probably all have a reason to want to be elsewhere than in our place." He said when they had closed the last box.

Madison smiled. "The grass is always greener elswhere, and all that stuff ?"

He nodded. "I like the color of the grass here. I don't know if it's my place, but it's not worse than elsewhere."

"I agree."

The agitation had calmed down around them, they piled the last boxes in a hardware truck. They were almost alone except for a few roadies who shared a pack of beer further. At the end of the parking lot, under a lamp, Charlie and Kevin were talking with fans whom one had a European flag around shoulders.

"You should go." Madison said by designating them from the chin. He lowered his eyes at her, waiting for her to develop her thought "This is your place."

He smiled and walked away towards the circle of people under the streetlight. He stopped a few steps further and turned back.

"Madison ?"

She was in the same place, hands in the pockets of her jacket and was looking at him moving away. Even from afar, he saw her lift the chin to signify that she heard.

"Thank you for the conversation."

"It was a pleasure." She said, pretending to reverence, arms outstretched as if she was stretching the folds of an imaginary dress around her. That made him laugh, he joined her in three great strides and, taking her hand, raised it to his lips without taking his eyes off her. It was dark but he could have sworn she was blushing.

"My Lady..." He greeted her. Then he walked away toward Kevin and Charlie without turning back.

##

It did not become a habit right away, to discuss like this at the end of concerts, but from time to time they did. It was always nice, always pleasant. One evening as another, Sam advised the sports bag Madison put on the last box of material and raised his eyebrows.

"Laundry." She replied laconically.

"We're in the middle of the night! And the trucks won't wait for you."

"There is a laundromat not far from here, I have a book and I'll take the night bus that passes in three hours to get to Atlanta. Perfect timing."

Sam frowned, raising the material crate to slide it in the truck as if it weighed nothing.

"There will be one at the hotel tomorrow."

Madison rolled her eyes in annoyance. "I wanna be alone for a while. You might like it, but the life in community starts to weigh upon me."

He took the bag from her hands. "Where's your laundromat ?"

"What are you doing ?"

"I'm coming with you. It's simply out of question for me to let a girl alone at night in an unfamiliar town. We'll take the night bus together."

Madison frowned and tried to regain her bag. Unsuccessfully.

"Sam ! "

"This is not negotiable!" He warned her. She followed him into the tourbus where he retrieved his jacket and briefly explained to Dean where he was going. The singer looked away from a spaghetti meal that seemed to require his whole attention and winked at them.

"Don't forget the love glove." He simply said.

Sam rolled his eyes and sighed and took Madison's shoulders to lead her off the bus. She tried again to regain her bag but he held it above his head so high she couldn't even touch it by putting herself on tiptoes.

"Sam!" She protested "What you do not understand in the sentence "I wanna be alone?""

"The possibility of finding you slaughtered by a maniac tomorrow morning. I'm coming with you that's all. I will do as if I did not exist but I'll stay with you !"

She continued to protest all along the way to the laundry but Sam returned her bag only once they were against the washing machine. She charged the machine and retrieved a book in an outside pocket of the bag before sitting down next to Sam who began to read over her shoulder. It was a love story and he had nothing better to do. She quickly get used to question him with a growl before turning a page to make sure he had ended up at the same time. They read in the monotonous and comfortable noise the washing machine under the harsh lighting neons.

When the spin cycle ended, Madison rose to transfer her clothes in the dryer and then returned to the adventures of her hero whom she had entrusted the care to Sam. Nothing in the world would have made him confess, but after an hour of reading he had a vital need to know if George would finally overcome his amnesia and remember that he loved the beautiful Ann to insanity.

"Wait ..." He came back to the page that Madison had just turned, without really believing what he had just read."She's gonna marry Grant ?"

"Yes. To retrieve the legacy !"

"What a bitch !"

Madison laughed, unable to resist to Sam's disgruntled and amused expression.

"Admit that you love it !"

"No ! No, I would not say that, but... He took the book from her hands and pointed to the dryer. "Get your clothes I'll read the rest aloud to you." Madison smiled as she rose and retrieved a load of her clothes she carelessly threw on the table that adjoined the benches while Sam quickly turned the pages by reading key passages. Once he looked up on her to make sure she was listening. She was holding up a blue satin panties and she saw him blush. It was a lovely and unexpected sight. This large tattooed body in leather pants, sitting with his elbows on his knees in a launderette, holding in his hand a book with an unequivocal front cover. And was blushing at the sight of a panty.

She had done it on purpose, a little revenge for disturbing her tranquility, and she continued to expose her lingerie until everything was carefully folded and stored in the sport bag. At this moment, George, at the wedding of Ann remembered the night they had spent together shortly after their first meeting.

"You skipped the sexy passage" She accused.

Sam nodded. "You'll read it yourself." He retorted holding her back the book. The weather was cool compared to the stifling heat of the laundry and he was happy to slip into the bus sheltered from the cold when they reached the bus station. He stretched his legs in the deserted way while Madison settled, shoulder wedged against the window in the seat next to his and reopened the book.

"You act like a tough guy outside and you can't even read a sex scene aloud.." She grumbled reading the pages he had skipped.

"I'm not acting tough, it's only the opinion that people have about me because I play some rock." He defended himself.

"It's more the tattos that are misleading, not really the job" She said. It was strange as with him the flimsiest conversations always deviated on more psychologiacl thoughts, obscured by all the things they didn't know yet about the other but that they both seemed quite unable to not mention it.

"It's nothing but a little ink, people who stop at that are idiots. It represents me, but it doesn't define me." Sam said raising the armrest between them to lay his head on Madison's knees. She cringed a little and he straightened immediately, apologizing.

She shook her head. "No, it's ok."

He laid back and closed his eyes. "Read" He demanded.

"You already read that passage."

"Read even though."

The bus drove off, covering a little embarrassed throat scraping from Madison. She forced herself to ignore the young man's head resting on her thighs, his shoulder which touched her hip and the desire she had to pass his hand through the drummer's hair to see if they were as soft as they looked like. She began to read with a voice as monotone as possible, as if images didn't come to disturb her vision in regular intervals. Images where Sam predominated but not his clothes. Somewhere deep inside her, she thanked the nature to never have anyone with the power of telepathy. Or empathy because otherwise he would have felt the warmth that overwhelmed her with every jolt of the bus, with each of his movements, with each of his smiles when she stumbled over a word or stammered. He had closed his eyes, his long eyelashes were shadows on his cheeks, and he fell asleep gradually. For a long time she did not dare move for fear of waking him and eventually she slipped into sleep after setting the alarm her cell phone twenty minutes before the scheduled time of arrival in Atlanta.

They awoke at the next stop and didn't manage to fall back to sleep despite the soothing hum of the engine and the smooth scrolling of streetlights they counted like so many bright sheeps. Sam had removed his jacket and folded his arms across his chest, he saw the night sky between two streetlights whitened his vision for a few seconds.

"Do they all have a meaning ?" Madison asked, patting the tattoos on his forearm. "Or is it just that you like make piercing your skin with needles ?"

Sam laughed as low as he could to not disturb other sleepy passengers. "Is this a roundabout way of asking me if I like feel pain ?"

"You didn't answered my question."

"Neither you did." He smiled. He stopped looking at the sky for a moment just to see her rolling her eyes sighing. "I'm not a needle fan. There are some I just found beautiful, and others... let's just say that there are things that exprime better with a permanent drawing than with a four minute song."

"Like _The Woman in White_ ?"

"How do you know that ?" he grunted straightening himself and sitting. He ran a hand over his face as if to chase tiredness.

Madison shrugged. "Your brother looks at you when he sings it, every night. And you have her name tattooed in white on your phalanges."

Sam instinctively clenched his fist to shirk his fingers from the young woman's look. "I don't want to talk about it." He said caressing with his thumb the almost invisible marks on his knuckles. Four luminous letters under black light at the exact spot where the rings would be accommodated by an American fist if he still had one. He felt vaguely trace of ink under his skin as a persistence of a life that was not anymore for a long time.

Madison opened her mouth as if to say something but immediately closed it. She took the book and put it between them so that they could complete their remaining fifty pages and find out if Ann and George would end up together.


	4. Chapter 4 : Reckless

Chapitre 4 : Reckless

The music began with drums, the kind of tempo all in setbacks that made Dean wonder how Sam came to uncoordinate his members so easily. There was almost no guitar in the piece. Only the drums, the bass and some synth chords that Kevin tinkled away with a concentrated look.

_"It's a reckless mess_

_That came one day_

_Bearing a stone heart in his chest_

_And a rock he carved day after day"_

It was the first song of the acoustic part, the one that everyone listened because it was the first time in forty five minutes that the people in the pit could afford to breathe. The one where Dean, having almost nothing to play, could take the time to watch the crowd and to catch some fan's eyes. It was also one of those who spoke the most to each of them.

Sam had written it for Kevin and Dean had composed it for him although the young man never made a reference to that. Yet, they all identified themself with the lyrics and Charlie, her, identified herself with the bass line wich was by far her favorite. Dean smiled, clenching his hand around the mic that he took from its stand to stride across the scene, briefly holding Kevin's shoulder with his free hand.

_"He ran away,_

_From the life he always wanted ,_

_Turned out in the end_

_Sometimes what you want, you can't get"_

There was no reason that anything goes wrong at Atlanta. This is probably why everything began to go wrong that night. The concert had been fine without being exceptional and they were just tired and a little dazed by the noise when they left the scene.

Of course it had to be a hall without an internal backyard. Of course some fan had waited here, but that was the good part of the night. Of course it had to be that night and not another that Sam had ended up shirtless on stage. Of course it was the night he had lost a bet against Dorothy and therefore was wearing the young woman's earings at the navel instead of his usual piercing. Of course it was the night Dean was wearing so much khol and silver jewels that Castiel had compared him to Lawrence of Arabia. What had been a compliment in his lover's mouth was suddenly striking him right in the stomach when he saw the black form of his father's car.

There weren't much Impala 1967 in as good condition, and Dean would have recognized this one even in a Chevrolet convention. He hadn't the time to find a way-out, or to warn Kevin and Charlie who were taking photos with fans.

"Boys."

The low voice of hs father was still exactly the same five years later. But this time he wasn't screaming, wich put Dean more uncomfortable than he would have confessed. It was easier to face John Winchester when he was screaming, when the man gave him a reason to dig his heels in, to fight or run away. It was easier to face him when he was obviously wrong than when he adressed them with the concerned look of a good father trying to get his sons out of trouble.

There should be a King in Hell who had Dean's name on his blacklist because it was at this moment that Castiel came up beside him. He hadn't seen him arrive, nor heard, and his first reaction was to push him away. John frowned.

"So that's what you're sleeping with these days ?"

The tone was calme, almost polite. Dean vaguely heard the horrified exclamations from some fans who had heard the remark. He knew Castiel well enough to guess his frown without even looking.

"You should go home." Sam said nicely to the fans while pushing them back, keeping his eyes on them until they were out of earshot. Kevin and Charlie were looking at John with curiosity. "Hello dad."

"Sam."

Father and son were gauging each other. Sam was far away from the child who had left the family home in Lawrence, almost eight years ago, a scholarship for Stanford and a backpack for only possession. When they were alone, when they had drunk too much, Dean used to say that that Sam was thousand dollars of tattoos from here. Sam retorted that he was dozens of mishaps from there and they were both right.

They both knew that John saw nothing else in Sam that a promising kid who had gone wrong. He had repeated it to them enough. Or at least he had hit his younger quite often with it so that he had slamed the door on the promise to never to return.

John's words, the two brothers still heard them. "I'm going to pay for my son to become a layabout who claims to save the world !"

Often when Sam was drunk or just feeling sad (the two sometimes going along) he was muttering things about being a layabout who didn't even saved the world. And Dean had nothing to respond to that.

John, him, hadn't changed. The same military cut, the same square shoulders, the same threadbare boots. Everything about him had the same look as his car: old, worn, but maintained with an almost compulsive excessive care. Sam heard him grind his teeth while examining him, his father's gaze up from his boots on his pants with holes, glued to his legs through sweat, to the earring with blue tassels on his navel. He saw him frown when he saw his tattos. He could almost follow the flow of his father's thoughts. God how far the phoenix tattooed all over his right side and disappeared beneath the waistband of his jeans went down ? What was that all these flowers ? When John squinted to try to read the sentence that stretched from one shoulder to the other along his collarbone, Sam made a step forward to facilitate his task.

"Beware the nice ones." John grumbled. " What does that mean ?"

Sam shrugged, resisting the urge to fold his arms to avoid attention from his father. He had not intention to do him the pleasure of being uncomfortable or affected by his judgment.

"That the bad one isn't always the one you'd think."

It was far, really far to be the real meaning of this tattoo, but Sam knew that John would have use the real meaning to blame him, and he hadn't the intention to help him with criticizes wich would eventually come anyway. John turned his look toward his older son as if he was hoping that he would be a lesser disappointement than his youngest. He wasn't. Dean's piercings sparkled under the lights of the parking lot, his leather jacket certainly smelled alcohol and smoke, his frayed jeans inhumanly tight on his legs had to give him a clean image to haunt the nightmares of his soldier father. He didn't care. Or rather, he wanted to throw it all in his face, show that had made it despite everything and despite him.

John looked deeply disappointed and saddened when he spoke again.

"That's not what your mother would have wanted for you."

Dean saw Sam clench his fists and teeth. It was the same argument they had heard all their lives, even more unfair for Sam than for Dean. The younger hadn't known his mother. For him, the only evidence of her existence was an old picture dog-eared of a baby who looked like him in the arms of a beautiful tired woman. All their lives they had heard those same words. To make them walk straight, to encourage them to take exactly the way John wanted them to.

Until the day it had been too much for Sam and he had left slamming the door. Dean remembered that moment with a cruel acuteness. He had clenched his fists and teeth exactly the same way that he was now.

"Stop saying that." Sam scolded. "Stop using her like that. She's dead, and she would have just wanted us to be happy !"

"Because you think that you're happy, son ?"

Dean could feel Sam boil beside him, feeling the tension in his muscles ready to strike. By reflex he put his hand on his brother's shoulder, a gesture that didn't always calmed him. This time it seemed to work, he felt Sam relax slightly, just enough to ensure him that he wouldn't reduce their father to a bloody pulp moaning on the asphalt of the parking lot. Yet he wanted to, Dean knew that.

"Go away dad." He said softly, hand still on Sam's shoulder. "We don't have anything to do with you anymore since a long time."

Castiel, Charlie and Kevin were watching without really understand what was happening. When John finally turned around and walked away, they saw Dean and Sam straighten instinctively as if a weight had been removed from their shoulders. They jumped all five when the bus driver's door slammed and Dorothy jumped out of the cab. She clicked her tongue, hands on her hips.

"A real role model of a paternal support that you have here boys." She said.

Dean nodded. "You have no idea."

"Want to share ?"

« Non. » Sam answered shaking his head. He forced himself to open his fists and breathe, pushing Dean's hand away with a movement from the shoulder. "I'm okay" He said low just for his brother to hear.

"I know."

"What just happened ?" Kevin asked as they all entered in the tour bus, Dorothy on their feets.

"John Winchester happened." Dean responded grinding his teeth. He sat in the corner of the seat that surrounded the small bus table, attracting Castiel against him, on his knees as if he was a comforting teddy. The young man let him do, moving only to hand him the glass of bourbon that Sam had just poured to them all. Charlie refused hers with a frown and Dorothy drank it.

"Aren't you supposed to drive soon ?" Kevin asked who was perched on his bunk a bit further with his own glass. Dorothy shrugged.

"We aren't expected anywhere before tomorrow evening." Through the bus windows she saw the hardware trucks leaving. "Beside I know two guys who need to get their spirit lifted more than going on the road."

"We're okay." Sam said drinking up his bourbon. He had setled next to the table too, Charlie sitting beside him.

"That's what people say when they feel bad but do not dare talk about it." The young woman said mid-voice.

Sam smiled softly to her. Dean had closed his eyes, placed his forehead on Castiel's shoulder, one arm around the young man's waist, the other across his knees. He smelled beer and after shave and Dean would have wanted to fall asleep immediately. Waking up the next morning in the arms of his lover with the impression that this night was just a bad dream. Dorothy woke him out of his torpor, slamming her glass against the table. He blinked a couple of times and looked up at her, puzzled. Several months on the road with their regular driver had enabled them to know approximately what kind of woman was Dorothy. The kind that never took "no" for a valid response.

"I call a taxi, we'll need more alcohol than that to recover from dad's visit."

From his perch, Kevin had a chuckle a bit embarrassed. "Looks like the intro phrase of a bad porn" he said. The remark made Charlie laugh. Sam and Dorothy exchanged a conniving glance with a smile.

"Oh non, don't tell me that's..." Castiel started. He stopped when Sam rose a hand to Dorothy to slap. "Is that really from a movie ?" Sam and Dorothy nodded in concert.

"You are.." Charlie began.

"Genius ?" Sam proposed at the moment Dorothy said "Fabulous ?"

"Depressing. The word she's looking for is depressing." Dean grinded while closing his eyes again, cheek comfortably settled on Castiel's shoulder.

Ten minutes later they were all engulfed in the back of two taxis which Dorothy gave the address of a nightclub far enough from the center to not meet a fan or pseudo journalist. Yet they wouldn't go unnoticed. Sam was still shirtless under his leather jacket, Charlie still wore her torn shorts and red boots she had on stage and Kevin hadn't been concerned to withdraw any of his piercings. Atlanta was not Los Angeles, here they knew, they would attract attention. But they had commonly decided not to care. The trip was made in a heavy silence.

Dean had almost made Sam promise to behave themselves, then he had changed his mind, had slipped his hand into Castiel's back pocket and pushed him in the car. It wasn't a night to be calm. He nibbled the ring that was in his lower lip, smiling despite himself. Curiously, he couldn't get "_Reckless_" out of his head and yet he rarely sang his own songs. He hummed quietly watching the streetlights succeeding each other through the taxi window.

_"Running away was such a relief_

_That he could no longer grieve_

_His old life washed up on the shore_

_But he misses normalcy, each year a little more"_

"I thought it would have calmed down by now. You know, that feeling of being less than nothing in front of him." Sam said thoughtfully during the trip. He had his forehead pressed against the window, arms folded and looked dejected.

"Apparently not." Dean said. Castiel was seated between them, his leg against the singer's, he had sprawled on the seat in order to prop his head on it and Dean would have kissed him in the neck if he hadn't seen his own reflection in the driver's mirror. He had preferred to put his hand on his lover's knee. In fact much higher than the knee and Castiel hadn't protested.

They said nothing more on the way but the brothers exchanged a glance when coming out of the taxi, just before entering the nightclub. A glance whereby they just recommended to each other to not do anything illegal. It was their rule for many years. Since the day that Sam had watched his apartment go up in smoke unable not to imagine the cries of his girlfriend trapped inside. Don't do anything illegal.

It was their rule. Everything else was allowed, but nothing illegal. They did not need this kind of problems in addition to the rest.

They had both watched their step since the long drive between California and Arizona, where they had talked more than since their teens. When they had stopped at night, exhausted, desperate and unhappy, they had entered a bar, drank excessively and had listened to a lonely country singer talking about his lost love. Sam had wanted to silence him with punches but he had restrained himself, already too drunk to stand straight.

"We should do that." He had stammered in an alcoholic fog.

"What ?"

"Music." It was how it had started. With two brothers who were nothing else but stray cats, alone and lost, who had only each other in the world.

Entering the night club, Dean was thinking about this moment. He cruelly remembered the days that had followed and some of the sharp words that their father had deigned to speak to his younger by way of condolences. Shortly after they bought an old guitar that Dean still carefully preserved in their Californian apartment, and drums for Sam they had placed in the back of an old rented Dodge. That day, he had had exactly the same feeling as he felt now. A strange excitement made of apprehension and haste, something bubbling inside him and making him want to jump in feet first in the future like in a large mud puddle. He smiled at his brother, took his lover by the waist and Dorothy by the hand. The music enveloped them six, aspiring them in a swirl of smoke and moving bodies. It was exactly what they needed.

_« Carving his rock on restless nights,_

_And healing his heart with gentle hands_

_The reckless mess became a man,_

_The reckless mess never stops to fight. »_

##

"I feel ten years younger." Dean giggled.

"Me, twenty years older." Sam replied lying on the ground on the dirty concrete of the drunk tank. Dean pushed him with the tip of his boot and reaped a grunt in reply.

"Come on Sammy, smile a little !"

"Prefer not." The younger grumbled with deep certainty that if he smiled he would vomit. The world revolved around him unpleasantly like he kept falling into a bottomless pit. His stomach was doing loops, and waves of nausea accompanied by violent chills regularly forced him to curl on himself, moaning.

Dean sat on the cell bench, head in hands, alcohol made him find very funny a situation that was probably not. The night had become interesting in a relatively short time that he counted in cocktails. Sam had minded to take only those with the most suggestive names, specifying the barmaid he would feel personally offended if he was deprived of one small paper parasol. In far too short time, their table had been covered by different sized glasses and Charlie and Kevin had started to play 3D puzzles with phosphorescent stirrers ("Do four triangles with four stirrers !"). Before that alcohol blurs his perceptions, he had seen girls turn around them, throwing glances at Castiel who wasn't paying attention and to Sam who sent them kisses, smiling with all his dimples, sometimes rising his drink so a girl could dip her lips into it. Dorothy had ended up taking his glass off his hands while Dean had led Castiel on the dance floor.

How it had all degenerated, none of them could really tell. Probably a combination of factors. Charlie had thrown her glass to the face of a too eager guy who had started screaming, calling her every name under the sun, eyes burned by the orange vodka. The guy must have had friends who came attracted by his cries covering the too loud music. Oddly it was Kevin who had struck the first blow, and from where he was on the dance floor, even with the strobes in the eyes, Dean had seen that the young man had hurt himself. Sam had not had this problem when he had stood up, dominating every client of the club, at least a head taller. Sam knew where to hit to hurt and without hurting himself. Dean hadn't had the time to hold his brother back and no torture could have make him remember how his hands had moved from the loops of Castiel's jeans to the chins of perfect strangers probably too drunk to understand what was happening to them. He had caught Sam's eye. His brother was smiling, a yellow parasol still stuck behind one ear, two rising from a pocket of his perfecto, just before his fist knocked one of their assailant right in the solar plexus. The man bent over in pain, just enough to provide a gripping spot to Sam's hand who, with a violent blow sent him flying across the table. Dorothy and Castiel had escorted Charlie and Kevin out, leaving the brothers alone with a group of furious customers, insult on the lips. The two brothers had placed back to back.

"You can't stay still !" Dean had growled seeing others gather around them.

"Kevin started."

Dean had rolled his eyes. But he couldn't really say he blamed his brother or that he fundamentally didn't like it. Adrenaline alleviated the pain of the blows he took and he fought back with a fierce joy that wasn't much next to Sam's. It should have worry him, it was his role as a brother to worry seeing his younger slip into old habits. But he just placed his back to his, and helped him distribute the blows.

The police had separated the fighters shortly after and now they were in drunk tank, Sam, Dean and a number of their assailants. Those they hadn't banged up too much at least. Sober, Dean wouldn't have been proud of him and he wasn't looking forward to get there because then the guilt would begin to eat him away. For now he was still pleasantly drunk and his ears were still slightly buzzing with excitement. He forced himself to stay still, aware that his every movement increased Sam's nausea. The youngest was still broken paper umbrellas stuck in the pockets of his jacket, small colored spots against the black leather tacky with alcohol.

"Bobby's going to kill us." Sam said between two nauseas. Dean nodded.

"But that was fun."

"Yep."

They said nothing more and Dean probably slept a while because he opened his eyes at the metal grating of a key in the lock of their cell. The sound bored his temples, seeming to pass in areas of his brain that he wasn't aware until now. On the ground, Sam whined moving his hands on his ears.

"Hello cowboy." Said the mocking voice of Dorothy. Dean painfully focused on the young woman who preceded Bobby in the cell. She was wearing a leather jacket from another age, cargo pants and boots that he hadn't seen on her the day before. She had certainly changed herself between their arrest and her return and he wondered what she had done about the others.

"Where are..." He began in a voice hoarse to have been merely used lately.

"Next motel. They're all fine." Bobby replied instead of the young woman, rushing into the cell to catch Sam's arm and force him to stand up. The young man stood up painfully, moaning in pain, eyes mid closed and Bobby threw him a t-shirt on the face that he grabbed awkwardly.

"Get dressed kiddo, we gotta go on the road." Sam's stomach clenched in protest and Bobby gave him an annoyed look. "You put yourself in this situation , Sam, take your responsabilities."

"I didn't say anything !" He protested.

"Just wanted it to be clear."

Sam pulled the t-shirt on while Dean was recovering their belongings in the office of a grumpy duty officer and was signing their defense. They followed Bobby and Dorothy outside without a word and settled in their manager's truck.

Sam had barely stretched his long legs sitting in the passenger seat that Bobby threw something on his knees.

"It's already in all the local papers and next week it'll be in all the tabloids !" He almost shouted while turning on the ignition. Dean leaned between the two front seats to take a look to the newspapers. The pictures that illustrated it hand't been taken the day before, but the articles were all more or less accurate. Someone or several someone had certainly recognized them in the club and spread the word.

"Jody's gonna love it." Sam commented, handing the newspapers to his brother.

"And she'll tear your eyes off your heads if it threatens the other dates of the tour !" Bobby grinded. "We can't afford this kind of publicity boys! Not now !"

Dean leaned back in his seat fighting against the guilt that was invading him. He didn't have to feel guilty, he hadn't start the fight and it was out of the question to leave Sam plunge into trouble alone. He had had no choice but hit back and if he'd been asked he would have to admit that he had rather liked it. It was different, for once to let go, to not have that composed face of star, to not do exactly what was expected of him. It was like returning to the time when Sam and him were wandering on the roads from one bar to another, driven only by their desires and their words scribbled alternatively always on the same old notebook.

Yet he felt guilty for betraying Bobby's trust, for breaking the promise that he and Sam had made "Don't do anything illegal, stay out of trouble". A fight in a bar wouldn't ruin their lives. Probably their reputation a bit, but after all they played rock, not opera, so fighting, drinking too much, and misbehaving was a bit what was expected of them.

Who had one day talked about "sex, drugs and rock n' roll" ? They failed this saying only on the drug plan. Bobby made sure of it and the few experiences of Dean in this area hadn't really made him want to continue. Sam, on the other hand had all the qualities required to end up nose in coke, but everyone knew their pact. "Nothing illegal." Sam sticked to it, everyone around them sticked to it and if drugs were circulating around them, at least they did it quite discreetly so members of Free Will could pretend to not see anything.

"Yeah, sure !" Dorothy said, pulling Dean from his thoughts. "It was high time we heard about them ! Scandal sells Bobby."

"Scandal isn't a term of the contract they signed !"

Sam had laid his head against the passenger window and closed his eyes with a painful sigh. "Screw the contract." He grumbled.

"You shouldn't boy. This contract ensures you regular incomes and the means to continue to make your music. I know dozens of guys that are dying in the street waiting for such opportunities."

"Great a new leash around our necks." Sam muttered, wrapping himself in his jacket, as far as he could from Bobby.

Dean and Dorothy exchanged glances and the singer sighed. He understood Sam. They hadn't left their father's authority just to get back under the heel of someone who didn't even really cared about their interests. John was a.. Dean had the words in mind but refused to think them too clearly. But at least their father sincerely wanted the best for his sons. Their only point of disagreement was the nature of this best. Their record company, however only wanted its own benefit and they were all aware of that. Certainly the money wasn't a problem even if it wasn't unlimited, but the counterpart was sometimes difficult to accept. If they still had the right to compose their songs, those were scrutinized, detailed, reformulated, re-cut to be "marketable". God save them of a worse label than the small "_Mature content, parental control Advised_" that now adorned the their CD case. It was almost funny to have fled to create a life and discovered that you're ultimately never totally free. Or that the price is just a bit too high for you.

Dean also put his head against the cold glass with a sigh.

"It won't happen again, Bobby." He promised, earning a disapproving grunt from Sam and a surprised raised eyebrow from Dorothy.

Bobby didn't peplied anything for a moment and then "For what it's worth boys. Charlie told me what happened. Personally I'm rather glad you rearranged these morons's faces."

The brothers smiled, relieved even if they wouldn't have confessed. It was not a perfect life nor quite what they had fantasized, but it had good, very good sides. You just had to adjust to it. The Winchester brothers were exceptionally adjustable when it came to find their place in the sun.

Dean had still the same song in mind, slightly distorted by his hangover.

_"The Reckless man didn't give no shit_

_About anyone or anything_

_Carving his way through life_

_Even if he didn't ask for it,_

_There's only one way out_

_When life's too much a duty_

_But he would never think about_

_Giving up to fatality."_

Several hours later, a grumpy Bobby dropped them at their hotel and Dorothy slipped away for a well deserved nap promising to slaughter anyone who would wake her up before the time to hit the road. Sam found Kevin playing video games, a mid closed eye under a cold compress hoping to regress his black eye.

"Sorry for that, dude." Sam said rummaging through his bag in search of clean clothes. The young man made a movement of his controller to indicate that it was no big deal and gasped indignantly when his character was killed. Sam went to the shower, promising to kick his ass in multiplayer mode as soon as he would have ate something. And drank about his weight in water.

Charlie and Castiel were reading each sprawled on one of the great beds in the room when Dean entered it. Castiel had borrowed his bedside book to the singer and was reading aloud a passage to the guitarist. A passage that talked about food like about the whole book. Dean felt his stomach turn at the mention of a spice and alcohol which despite three reading of the book he couldn't determine the origin.

They both smiled at him and Charlie stood up, one finger between the pages of her book, to greet him. She put an arm around his shoulders and held him against her before wrinckling her nose.

"You smell."

"Sorry, Your Highness, the jailers didn't let me take a shower." He grumbled by getting rid of his jacket he dropped to the ground.

"Have you told them that you had fought to defend my virtue ?"

"What virtue ?"

From the other side of the room they heard the laughter of Castiel who hadn't moved from his place. Charlie shot him a false outraged look, hitting Dean's shoulder with her book.

"Happy to see you again, Convict."

Dean smiled but didn't raise and the young woman left. He collapsed on the bed with a sigh. His vertebrae gave him the impression to put themself back one after the other as he settled deeper into the mattress.

"She's right." Castiel said drawing himself up on one elbow to look at him. "You stink."

"You love it." Dean mumbled, eyes closed.

"True." Castiel leaned over him to put his lips on his, gently, his hands gripping the singer's stained t-shirt strong enough to deform it.

"Do I have to drag you to the shower ?" He asked, not bothering to really move away from his lover.

Dean shook his head, banging their nose by the way, his eyes still closed. "Nah. I'll go, just help me to my feet before I fall asleep."

The showers in hotels were every time an adventure. Their temperature could vary from "Arctic Circle" to "Hell Circle" at the slightest touch of the taps and the pressure usually knew only two options : "Light spring rain" or "Instrument for breaking the Living" (the classification had been established by a Charlie with hair still full of shampoo at the beginning of their tour and she had stayed). Dean turned the knobs carefully to test the shower.

"Stable temperature with option instrument of torture." Castiel said amusingly, leaning against the sink.

"I'm pretty sure my nipples won't resist the shower's pressure !" Dean muttered, hurriedly withdrawing his arm from the boiling water.

"Do you need any help with that ?" Castiel laughed from his position near the sink.

"Nah, for suicide missions I'm doing very well alone." He stepped into the shower with caution as the young man was leaving the bathroom smiling.

"Protects your nipples, I became attached to them !"

"Watch yours when I'll join you !" Dean shouted over his shoulder just before his lover closes the door. Vapor invaded the shower cabin.

By the time he cleared his skin of all traces of the previous night, Castiel had packed his suitcase wich Dean found opened on the bed. The accountant's holidays were ending and he would take a plane back tonight, a few hours before the concert.

"Sorry." The singer said sitting on the bed. "I didn't mean to spoil our last day."

Castiel leaned over to put his lips on his, smiling. "You didn't spoil anything. In fact, it was... pretty hot to see you fight yesterday."

Dean chuckled. "You're not objective."

"I don't want to be." Replied the other closing his suitcase. "I save that for people I don't like." He sat down next to his lover and slipped his hand in his, gently pressing it when he saw Dean didn't answer.

"You'd love me even if I killed someone, wouldn't you ?" Dean asked softly.

"Yes." Castiel answered seriously. He meant it. Dean's face fell and he was only staring at the suitcase placed between their feet. "You don't think you deserve it." Castiel noticed.

Dean shrugged. "I've nothing special. I don't understand why you love me so much. Cas, I ended up in drunk tank yesterday, and I'm not proud of it. And yet you still look at me like I'm Batman or something !"

There was a moment of silence while Castiel was considering his response.

"You're the one that makes me... Cas." Said the blue-eyed young man. He moved to sit on the lap of his companion, legs either side of his hips, arms resting on the singer's shoulders. "Not just Castiel." He started again. "Not the accountant, the former sick child or the guy who lives alone and spends his holidays to follow a rock band like a groupie. Just, Cas." Dean blinked slowly crossing his hands around the waist of his lover. "You see me not only as I am, but as I'd want to be. What do you find in this that is not worthy of being loved ? What do you find in yourself that is not worthy of being loved ?"

Dean smiled, Castiel's forehead pressed against his. The young man's hands caressed his cheeks, his shoulders gently.

"You say that because you saw my father."

Castiel shook his head. "I'm telling you because you need it."

"Do you have enough time to say goodbye ?" Dean asked, leaning towards Castiel to lay a suggestive kiss in his neck. The other smiled.

"It depends, do you invite me to dinner before ?"

"Did I ever invited you to dinner ?"

Castiel shook his head. "Then I believe I have the time to." He said before kissing him again. It was the last time he could do it before what seemed an eternity and he had no intention to waste any second.


	5. Chapter 5 : Worth Fighting For

Chapter 5: Worth fighting for

There was an unusual amount of people in the backstage, fans who had won VIP accesses, reporters, intruders and people Sam didn't even wanted to know who they were. He had took refuge on the scene one hour before the opening of the hall's gates to supervise his drums' assembly while disturbing Madison the best he could.

"The Floor Toms in the order !"

"They are in order !"

"Just wanted to be sure you're following." He teased.

She had an incensed sigh and threw him a fastening piece to the face, slowly enough so he could catch it and play with it for a moment before handing it back.

"Don't you have anything else to do ?" She mumbled. She was sitting on the floor, assembling the cymbals' telescopic stand.

"I do, but I don't want to." He sighed while sitting beside her. "They're twelve thousand over there and at least ten thousand will ask questions about my tattoos."

"Shouldn't have done them on visible areas if you didn't want to talk about it." She said.

He smiled. "The most important aren't visible."

Madison looked at him puzzled, obviously wondering where he managed to hide his tattoos under his too big tank top. He was smiling with all his dimples. From each side of the straps she saw the beginning of the calligraphy which went along his collarbone as a pectoral and ended in the heart of two sunflowers on his left shoulder. By the too large hem, she could make out the head of the phoenix on his hip and a piece of the wolf on his back when he was moving.

"Well played, now I'm curious. Where are they ?"

"Ah ah !" He did while shaking his head and a forefinger in front of her. "No questions !"

"You wanted me to ask you the question."

"Nope." He got up on his knees so he was a bit taller than she was while sitting and leaned toward her ear. "I wanted you to ask the question to yourself."

He had the pleasure to see her lower her eyes, embarrassed. She mumbled an insult before going back to work while he got up on his feet, proud of himself. The backstage weren't calmer than when he had left them and inevitably, being close to six foot high wasn't helpful to weave in and out discreetly anywhere. Bobby addressed him a severe look so he would sit on a couch between the other members of the band to answer to one, two or ten interviews before going on the scene. It was something that he didn't particularly like, especially because he had to stay still, sitting and smiling to people he had absolutely no desire to charm.

One of the reporters seemed different, and the questions she asked confirmed Sam's feeling. To his utter astonishment she neither addressed to him or Dean, but directly to Charlie and Kevin. Other surprise, she didn't asked them what it was like to be "The Group Girl" (Charlie was extremely grateful to her for that) nor if Kevin felt at home in the group considering his ethnic origins (everyone was extremely grateful to her for that). Instead, she asked why he had joined the group. The three others looked at him, they knew how the things had happened. But not really why. Kevin seemed embarrassed for a while, then leaned toward the reporter, elbows on the knees, hands crossed and looked at her as if he was about to reveal an important secret to her, which was certainly the case.

"I had almost dropped the music." He started.

##

Three years ago.

"Hey... How are you ?"

Kevin leaned against the back of his chair, sighing, his phone settled between his shoulder and his ear, head craned in a painful angle.

"I'm fine. How are you ?"

"You're lying." Said Channing's voice on the other end.

"How would you know that ?"

"I get to know you pretty well, after all this time."

He smiled, eyes into space. He could imagine her sitting at her desk like him, facing a pile of lessons, books open before her, the other closed with pens as bookmarks, and a collection of multicolored highlighters within reach.

"Did you play today ?" She asked again. He sighed and ran his free hand through his hair.

"I didn't." He answered. He turned his chair until being able to see the case of the cello left at its place near the closet. "No time with exams approaching."

"You work too much Kevin."

"Or not enough ... I've really no time to waste on that if I want to be admitted to Princeton."

There was a little gap at the other end of the line and then "Remind me why you're keen to go to Princeton so much ?"

"Because that's where the charming princes are trained." He replied in the tone of pleasantry. Channing chuckled, it was an old joke between them. For as long as they had known each other (and it had been quite a while now), he hadn't hide his ambition to go to Princeton, like his father. She had never hidden that she found the University of Michigan well enough for her. "After all, a degree is a degree and we live in a world where you have more chance to earn your living by being a plumber than a lawyer."

It didn't really agree but the argument made sense and they had quarrel enough about it to know that it was not worth getting angry.

"Would you play a piece for me ? Geography will drive me crazy by the end of the day otherwise."

He glanced at his own revisions. The exams were approaching at an alarming rate, it seemed that the time took pleasure to scroll faster every day. But ten minutes more or less would certainly not change anything. He stood up, stretching his aching legs from having remained seated for too long and took the cello from its case.

He had begun to play it because of her entering middle school. They were friends and she spoke of the orchestra with such passion that he had decided to try it.

Kevin had always been a smart kid, probably a little too much, and gifted. He had quickly assimilated the piano and found it almost too easy, too commonplace, ordinary. However, cello...

The instrument was almost as tall as he, massive and surprisingly light considering its size. Its four strings could produce strangely organic sounds of which he felt the vibrations along his hands and in his chest when he was playing.

He sat back on his office chair after having put the phone on speaker and tested a few chords, thinking about what he could play to Channing. The sound wouldn't be as good as if she was in the room with him, but it would be nice anyway. Kevin was determined and never did anything by half. He had spent months playing tirelessly to have sufficient mastery of his instrument before relaxing his fingers became calloused because of the strings. He hadn't really stopped since. Sometimes studies and stress made him forget what he felt when he played. Then he rested the pike of the instrument on the board devoted to this use, bow on the strings, closed his eyes and remembered.

He began to play one of Channing's favorite tunes, a concerto by Vivaldi whose score gave the impression of a spring wind. The instrument was vibrating against his shoulder as he left the music clear his head of his worries. It took him a long time before identifying the intruder sound that disturbed his ear, a piano that had joined him. He smiled slightly and tuned his playing to Channing's until their scores were complementary per the end of the song.

He picked his phone, still holding his instrument.

"Ready to resume geo ?" He asked. He could almost hear her shake her head.

"Another piece ?"

"One, then we really have to work."

"I'll work twice as hard." She promised. He knew she was crossing her fingers behind her back.

##

Princeton was not what Kevin had imagined. He had expected the difficulty of the courses, he had expected the demanding teachers and homework that would fall on them in steady rain. He hadn't expected the other side of the Ivy League. He hadn't thought about the rich students who'd come passing the time while waiting for their parents to make a fairly substantial donation to the university to buy their diplomas. He hadn't imagined staying awake all night not to work but because his barrack room neighbors were partying. He hadn't expected to find himself so alone that it seemed, for the first time in his life, that he was the ugly duckling from the story. But he had worked so hard to get there, his mother had sacrificed so much to pay for his education that he couldn't give up now.

His cello rarely left from its case now, too many things to study, not enough time to play. With the lack of practice he lost his touch a little more each day and dared less to approach the instrument that his roommate sometimes openly mocked.

"Couldn't have learned to play an instrument for real men, asian boy ?"

A year went by in this way. He made few friends and yet not very good ones. College wasn't at all like he had imagined it. When he returned in Wisconsin for the spring holidays, he saw Channing and their old friends with a pleasure that he hadn't felt for months.

The cello came out of its case and neither his mother nor Channing only made the slightest allusion to his obvious lack of practice. It wasn't that fun to play from now on. It was hurting his fingers, ears and heart.

His eyes and mind focused on his studies, on moving one step after another, day after day, and the cello remained in the Wisconsin abandoned on his bed.

In June that year, the admission lists for the second year didn't contain any Kevin Tran.

For the first time, Kevin wasn't the best. The dream he had pursued for so long was cracking under his feet and the first person he had the courage to talk about it was Channing.

Wisconsin was gray and rainy when he returned head down and tail between legs. His mother made him sit at the big table in the dining room. "Now what ?"

##

Kevin looked up the journalist who was taking conscientious notes.

"She said, "Now what?" and I had no answer. Not a single dream to pursue, no purpose, no ambition."

"What did you do then?"

"I had almost dropped the music. And that was the only thing I had left. So I took a single ride to LA."

He glanced at Dean and Sam. "And it worked. I didn't even have a dream anymore, and it came true anyway."

The journalists were all looking at him, some with a skeptical smile.

"Did you just invented all of this ?" Sam asked with a huge smile.

Kevin winked at him "Maybe."

"Or maybe he's telling the truth." Charlie intervened.

"In any case it's a beautiful story, can I tell it to my kids someday ?" Dean laughed.

"You aren't likely to..." A kick in the ankles silenced Sam. "Whatever" He grunted retracting his legs as far away as possible from his brother. He smiled to reporters to distract them while ignoring Dean's annoyed look.

Leaving the lodge that served as a press room, Charlie retained Kevin's arm. They waited for all journalists to be out of earshot before speaking.

"The girl who made you take the cello up again, does she know ?"

"That I'm part of a band ?"

"No, that you're in love with her."

Kevin choked on his saliva and stared at her with wide eyes. He felt Sam pass an arm around his shoulders and lean on him.

"Where would you see that ?" He mumbled.

"It is rather obvious given the way you talk about her !"

"I am not..."

"Oh yes you are." Dean intervened.

"And certainly for a long time." Sam added. Kevin pulled his arm away, annoyed and embarrassed. The three others were still staring at him. The backstage neon gave them an oddly pale and sallow complexion, made their piercing shine. They were waiting for an answer.

"Since I was twelve and till today." He sighed, knowing they would not let him in peace before they get their answer.

"And you never told her ?" Dean asked, perplexed. Kevin shook his head. It was that or shrug, he couldn't do both at the same time.

"Tell her you're in a band. It always work." Sam said, leaning back on the wall.

Kevin shook his head again. "It works for you because you have extremely low standards. Channing doesn't care if I'm in a band or in the streets. She's my friend."

Sam made a rude comment that he didn't listen. That night, the sound of the cello had a particular taste and Kevin couldn't help smiling during the whole concert and even long after.

##

Castiel noticed the bruise only long after returning home when he met by chance his reflection in the bedroom mirror. He decided to ignore it.

It was part of the things he had decided not to worry about. Do not worry, do not panic. Do not remember that this was how everything had started.

He returned to work on Monday morning. A few rare colleagues noticed the new addition to his tattoo on which he still passed healing cream on a regular basis. He plunged back with satisfaction in the alignment of figures of the balance sheet of the company for which he worked. Invoices and expense justifications started to arrive on his desk with a reassuring regularity.

It was a different life than being on the road with Free Will. Having Dean on the phone every night was nothing like his presence and Castiel would have lied if he had said that he didn't miss the singer. But no one asked him the question because nobody knew and it suited him perfectly. He loved the order and immutability of the figures who lined up on his computer. He loved the regularity of his life every day, get up every morning, have breakfast, work until evening, sometimes go out for a drink with colleagues and avoid embarrassing questions "So Castiel, do you see anyone at the moment ?"

"In a way."

Then he returned home, dined waiting for Dean's call then fell asleep again, all smile. It was regular, serene, reassuring. Very different from the disjointed life he led when he was following them on tour or simply when Free Will was in California, Dean paying him a visit most of the time at the most improbable moments.

The two aspects of his life complemented each other curiously well and Castiel was pleased to enjoy his regained tranquility for a few weeks.

Then he could no longer ignore the bruise. The bruises, actually. He bruised every time he bumped somewhere. One on the hip, thanks to the door handle. One on the shoulder, thanks to the can of food that had struck him two days before, falling off the shelf. Several on the legs for which he accused the coffee table, his desk or God knew what.

He might have continued to pretend not to see them if he hadn't had a sudden high fever over it. He could feel it without even checking his temperature. His eyes and cheeks were burning, his voice was hoarser than usual, and one night he woke up in a sweat, the covers rejected so far from the bed he thought he had had nightmares.

Working days seemed longer to him, more toilsome and appetite was already lacking. This was how, exactly how everything had started in his teens.

He looked at the tattoo that passed his sleeve. The eight egrets that were flying away from the dandelion. Eight years of remission.

When later that night, Dean called, the voice joyful and excited like every time he made a good show, Castiel told him neither about the bruises nor about fever. He curled up in bed and listened to his lover telling his day without saying a word.

"Cas... You're all right ?" Finally asked the singer.

Castiel nodded, knowing full well that Dean would not see him.

"Sing something to me please." He didn't add that he wouldn't manage to fall asleep without it. Dean knew. There was a moment of silence on the other end, then the noises and static on the line became more audible when Dean put the speaker on and retrieved his guitar. First there were only little hesitant chords, then gradually a melody that Castiel didn't know. It was gentle, played by one guitar but no doubt that with the addition of drums, bass, and cello it would seem more rousing. For now it was a lullaby that suited him. He closed his eyes, the phone jammed between his ear and the pillow. He didn't put the speaker on as if let the sound spread in the room would weaken the content, as if it was a secret that might be unveiled.

_"There's monsters under my bed_

_Dad gave me a gun to get rid of them_

_Salt on my window keeps demons away_

_I ride, Death by my side, everyday."_

Castiel felt a huge sob shake his chest and stuck in his throat. He smothered it by biting his fist until the pain made his eyes swollen with tears. The very soft music seemed to wrap around him like his lover's arms during bad days. But there was nothing other than the blanket over his shoulders and he was acutely aware of his own solitude.

_"But remember who is the real enemy,_

_It's not the nightmare that keeps you up at night,_

_It's the nightmare that lies inside of me_

_Far away from my reach, far away from my sight"_

One thing Castiel had often heard around him in concert, it was the way people were deeply touched by the lyrics of the group. Or other songs. He firmly believed that there was for every human being a song which spoke to them so much, so deeply that she could change their lives.

How did Dean managed to choose everytime exactly the right song to calm his fears, to lull him to sleep, to wake him up ? He didn't know and didn't want to ask the question.

_"Every monster can be killed,_

_But there is no monster as fierce as your own hate,_

_The worse enemy you'll have to fight is in your head,_

_I know every monster can be killed_

_But sometimes, a gun won't get rid of them."_

Castiel smiled and sniffed. He had like a big lump in the breast and didn't know if it was love, relief or panic.

"You're crying ? Hey it wasn't meant to make you cry !" Dean said at the other end of the line. He had that slightly worried and annoyed tone that he always had when he expected an unpleasant criticism. Castiel rolled onto his back the phone in hand and wiped his nose with his sleeve.

"No, I'm not crying." He lied. He was curiously good at lying.

"Liar."

Maybe not this good, in the end.

"I miss you." Castiel said to drift the conversation.

"I hope so."

They hung up shortly after but Castiel stayed a long time looking at the screen of his phone. There was a photo he had took of Dean, backlit. He was from back, and was barely recognizable, but the photo both overexposed and in the shadows showed something of the singer that Castiel was one of the few to know. He gazed at the screen even after it had turned black until his eyes burned from fever and tiredness. He remembered without really know where it came from a phrase he had told to Dean a few week earlier. Just after Kate's death. "That's something worth fighting for."

He pushed a key to bring the phone back to life and composed the number he still knew by heart years after even if he only saw his attending doctor once a year for an usual follow-up care.

"Doctor Talbot ? I think I have a problem." He said with his husky voice.

He pressed the phone in his hand repeating to himself in a loop "_Worth fighting for, worth fighting for_."

He didn't realized that he was shaking and that panic tears had started running along his nose while he curled up on himself in his bed.

##

Dean was sharing his hotel room with Sam that night. His younger brother hadn't made a single sound when he had played a song for Castiel. He had intended to slip away when the singer had got his guitar out but had sited on the bed at his brother's sign. They had lived, just the two of them for years, then Castiel had joined their lives and it had never been a problem for the drummer. They were a family, a clan, and Sam was one of the few rare person in the world to whom Dean didn't hide anything. So a simple phone call, a sweet song for his lover, it wasn't the kind of things he felt the need to hide. It was a shared intimacy which constituted what was the closest of a home for them lately. Sam has stayed quiet during the whole song, listening to it certainly as much as Castiel. When he hung up, Dean stayed leaned above his guitar, thoughtful.

"Why did you left ?" Sam asked. The other turned his eyes toward him, he looked tired and took a while to understand the question.

"Someone had to watch over you."

"No Dean, the true reason."

It was a question he posed regularly for years without getting a satisfactory answer. But tonight there was something different in the air, a little more confessions, a little less restraint. Something favorable to secrets.

"Josh." Dean replied after a moment, his back to his brother, watching the parking lot through the window just to not meet his gaze.

"Josh. I'm supposed to consider this a sufficient answer ?"

Dean sighed again, unable to develop, waiting for Sam to do what he did best : take the hint.

"...Dad knew for him and you ?" Sam asked softly.

"There wasn't anything between us."

"Like it'd stop him." Sam gritted. "He's obstinate, I guess once the idea crossed his mind he stuck to it."

Dean nodded.

"What happened ?"

"I never knew. Never really wanted to actually. But Josh ended up at the hospital with a missing tooth and two broken ribs. A few fingers, too. When I came back Dad barely looked up from the TV. He said that was what happened to boys like him. I assume that for him it was very clear that it also meant the boys like me."

Sam smiled without joy, it was a stretching of the corners of the mouth just marking his contempt and lack of surprise. "He didn't exactly use those words, did he ?"

Dean didn't need to answer, they were both here the day of the last confrontation between Sam and their father, they both knew exactly which words John could use to talk about his own sons.

"What happened next ?"

"What you'd want me to have done ? I never knew if it was dad or his friends who had done it, and I couldn't really explain to Josh what had happened."

"So you left."

Dean nodded.

"Does Cas know that ?" Sam asked again by lying on his bed, one arm under his head, turned to his brother. He had only removed his jacket and his shoes, and his tattoos put a touch of strange color on the grey bedspread.

Dean acquiesced. "He asked about the guns."

Sam nodded. Dean was referring to his very first tattoo, the one that was still under a large bandage when he had broken into his apartment at Stanford years earlier, scaring Jessica and nearly being thrown through the window by his little brother. It wasn't really a week that he liked to remember, but tonight, things were a little different. Something in the air maybe, or perhaps because the two of them were alone for the first time in several days. He crossed his arms, closed his eyes and let his thoughts take him back to the night he had seen Dean, two years after slamming the door of their home. Two years without news almost. A phone call at Christmas or at their birthday, a card at the new year, and often, the feeling of recognizing Dean in a silhouette on campus, in a move, or the smell of an old leather jacket in a amphitheater.

Then one night, Jessica had awakened suddenly swearing that there was someone in the apartment and Sam had hit on an intruder before this one starts to grumble "Damn Sammy it's me !".

No one called him Sammy other than his brother and his father. Maybe because he had not really the stature or the size of someone who's given a diminutive or nickname. Maybe also because the last guy who had tried it had coughed blood for several days thereafter.

Of the first night they had spent together, Sam remembered very little. He had asked Dean why he had finally left from home and his brother had evaded the question. Now he knew. He also understood the tattoo, now, years later. Two pistols, their barrels crossed, disappearing in a flowerbed of roses in the small of the back of his brother. Sam had made fun of the location, calling it his "tramp stamp" until it was no longer funny, and Dean had always just smiled, shrugging. His tattoos had all deeper meanings than Sam's. But this one was special. There had to be a reason why the two weapons were different, a Colt and a Beretta, one bearing the word "Ask" and the other "Tell". By themselves the two words had clearly enough indicated to Sam the meaning of the tattoo and he hadn't asked further questions. Their father had been part of the Marines, and the law of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" had almost always been displayed in letters of fire above their door in Kansas.

"When you left home, you came directly to Palo Alto, right ?"

Dean nodded, puzzled. Sam and him talked rarely about this time, because it always led to a memory that neither of them wanted to occur to them.

"Why ?"

The singer shook his head. He had never really raised the question himself. It had always been clear that he had needed someone at that moment. Not to listen to him complain, not to help in anything, just a loving presence. His father was no longer part of the reassuring presences in his life long since. Sam was all that remained. Even if they hadn't seen each other for years, even if he had no idea how he would be received.

"I had nowhere else to go." He said finally by putting down the guitar against the bedside table. Sam nodded slowly. They didn't say anything more afterwards and fell asleep one after the other, having reached their maximum capacity of confession.


	6. Chapter 6 : Every Night

**Chapter 6:** Every night

Dean had lost the ability to think or listen to the word "hospital". The phone was shaking in his hand as though it wanted to live its life away from him.

"Excuse me, I'm... I.. hem.." He stammered, his mind blurred and white.

It was late in the night, he was tired, the sweat soaking his shirt after the show was cool on his back and soon he would start shivering despite the heating of the tourbus. He knew they were watching him, Charlie and Sam with a worried look, and Kevin seated next to him on his bunk, who gently reached out to take his phone before getting up. He was one of those people who can call only while pacing.

"Excuse me." He said with a professional voice that Dean had never heard him. "Mr. Winchester is currently not in a condition to listen to you, therefore I will take the information for him if you please?"

Charlie refrained from giggling, seeing Sam silently repeat his "if you please" by articulating exaggeratedly. Kevin swept them out of his perception field with an annoyed movement of the hand and slipped between the seat and the little table of the tourbus, grabbing a pen that was lying there and made another gesture for someone to hand him paper. He noted an address, a few numbers, thanked the person on the line and hung up. Dean had not raised his head when Kevin began to tap away something on Sam's laptop. It seemed to him that the world had stopped turning. This was only a bad dream he was going to wake up from. He was looking for the flaw in the dream, the improbable detail element that would rule in his favor. But the reality was still the same. He would have hold on anything, the slightest change in Sam's piercing, the slightest change in Charlie's hair, at the slightest defect in the folds of the blanket on which he was sitting. Anything to reassure himself and tell himself that he was dreaming, that he would wake up and bang his head against Charlie's bunk like every fucking time. And like every fucking time he would hear her grunt and turn over above him. None of this happen, and Kevin handed him his phone which had just beep twice.

"You're leaving in two hours. Your plane back tomorrow is at one o'clock. Tickets are on the phone."

Sam and Charlie were watching them without understand. Dean nodded and began to look in the closet for something to change himself. By the time he turned back, Kevin was helding his bag in one hand and his passport in the other. Dean hugged him briefly before rushing off the bus, leaving him to explain the situation to the others.

The famous phrase said that you never know how much you love something until it's gone. Dean had believed that he knew how much he loved Castiel. He had sincerely believed it. But in the taxi that took him to the Texas airport, in the plane that took him back to California, in the corridors of the hospital, he realized that he had been wrong. Incredibly wrong.

He wouldn't have thought it possible to retain as much breath, as if that would change anything! Like a child's play, a bet against fate. "_If I can hold my breath until the traffic light, he'll be fine_", "_If I get down the hall without breathing everything will be fine_". It was stupid but he had no other way to reassure himself. He clenched his hand in his pocket, on his phone which kept vibrating and which he refused to answer before he had seen Castiel. Before the terror that was clawing its way between his ribs had ceased to want to tear his heart to shreds. Or had succeeded.

The day had barely rise and a pressed nurse gave him a dirty look when he entered the service Kevin had noted the coordinates on a post-it slipped into his passport.

"Excuse me, I'm Dean Winchester, you called me about one of your patients... Castiel Novak?"

The look of the nurse softened a bit, he didn't know if it was because he had a legitimate reason to be there, if it was because she was waiting for someone to ask after her patient, or because she knew who he was. In any case he didn't care. She indicated him the room, specifying that it wasn't visiting hours yet.

"I just want to see him, be sure that he's fine."

She nodded and pointed the end of the corridor with her finger. "Hurry, visits are usually the afternoon."

Contrary to popular belief, the hospital did not smell of sanitizer. Actually, the hallway smelled of lemon detergent that someone had just used to clean the floor, and coffee carried by a rattling carriage while caregivers in pink gown opened the doors one by one, asking patients what they wanted for their breakfast.

The room wasn't exactly white either. The walls were covered until mid-height of an unidentifiable material of a rather random green, the linoleum on the floor was clear blue and the blanket of the bed was a faded orange. The ajar door of the bathroom and the walls were of a cream shade that was perhaps just a blank which hadn't aged well. A cart, a fixed table, a chair, a bedside table and a wall cupboard into the wall composed the entire furniture except for the bed in which Castiel was sleeping. He was lying on his back, his head settled between two pillows, and with only the position Dean could tell that something was wrong. The only times Castiel was sleeping on his back rather than curled up between two layers of duvet were when the singer had his arm around his belly and that he didn't dare move for fear of waking him.

He was tempted to go out and close the door quietly but Castiel opened his eyes, turning his head toward the door with a nice smile that tensed when he recognized Dean.

"What are you doing here?" He asked, voice quavering a bit of not having been used for several hours.

"Someone called me last night to inform me that you were here. I thought that I'd drop by, you know, to see if you were still alive." Dean gritted, completely entering the room.

"Why did they do that?" Castiel sighed, closing his eyes again.

"Well, apparently I'm your person to contact in case of emergency." Dean replied, pulling the chair near the bed. Castiel pursed his lips with the movement that he reserved for circumstances in which he castigated himself for his own stupidity.

"Why didn't you call yourself Cas?" Dean asked. Castiel could hear by his voice that he was containing his fear and anger with great difficulty.

"What's the point? If I have nothing serious, then there's no need to worry, and if I have something serious, worrying will not change anything."

"You're kidding, right?"

Castiel turned his gaze to him in surprise. "Why would I make fun of you?" He asked, frowning.

Dean had an outburst of temper. "You really think I could just _**not**_ worry? Since we've known each other, tell me one, just one fucking time I didn't worried, or not felt responsible when something like that happened?"

Castiel had straightened up in the bed as Dean spoke, the singer had got up from his chair and advanced to the window to try to calm down.

"This is exactly why I did not want them to call you! Because you care! Because you're going to worry more than me and I'm already terrified!"

"About what Cas? Terrified about what? A relapse? It's been eight years, you can't relapse!"

"It's in my genes Dean! I can't relapse but I can have a leukemia recurrence or another cancer or pretty much anything! And if that's the case do you know why I did not want to tell you? Because it will be ugly. It will be awful and I don't want you to see it!"

"You don't want me to see what? To see you fight? Struggle for your life? I thought I'd taught you it was worth fighting for! That's what you said, right?" Dean yelled, turning to him.

Castiel opened his mouth ready to respond and closed it after a second. He looked hurt, sad and tired and Dean immediately blamed himself for his fit of temper. He could put this on the account of his fear, of travel fatigue, of the hunger he deliberately ignored, but he still felt bad for wanting this much to yell at his lover to evacuate his own panic.

"Sorry." He apologized while sitting back. "But Cas, we're together, and that means when you fight, I fight too."

Castiel shook his head. "You can't fight with me, not here, not in these conditions."

"I know. And it kills me to be helpless." The singer said, head down.

"That's why I didn't want you to know. I didn't want you to worry."

Castiel pulled out a hand of the bed to take his. Dean raised it to his lips almost mechanically.

"You know... When I was a kid, my mother told me that angels were watching over me when she put me to bed. And maybe that was the case but shit, I wanted them to watch over her too! I had to watch over my lil' brother my whole life because our father was unable to, like those damn angels. No one was there to save Jess, not even Sam because I'd taken him somewhere else that day. So tell me, how can you demand me to not worry? To not do anything when I know that even if we're in the City of Angels, none will take care of you for me? Tell me how you can think that so that I know where I misled you all these years so you think I'm that kind of selfish bastard? Tell me."

Castiel took a long time to respond and Dean was about to apologize when "You didn't mislead me. I know there is an angel watching over me. I knew it the day I saw you and I have never ceased to be grateful since. But worry is suffering, and I think you've had more than your fill in this area."

"I'll never have my fill of you." Dean smiled. He vaguely wondered what he was looking like, with drawn features, barely clean, with tattoos and incongruous piercings in the sanitized world of Castiel.

"This is the gayest thing you've ever said to me." The young man teased.

"I know, if you repeat that to anyone I'll tear your tongue apart."

"That's my rocker!"

Dean found himself laughing and for a few seconds knowing what they looked like had no more importance. An almost smiling nurse came in with a tray for Castiel and he thanked her with the kind of smile that he usually reserved for cats in the street. Dean loved that smile and the way it crinkled his eyes and sides of the nose.

Before leaving, he bent to kiss him on the forehead and then on the mouth. Castiel still tasted like coffee and butter.

"Do us a favor, fight, since you're the only one who can! And whatever you have, promise to tell me. Promise me! So I can at least take care of you."

Castiel nodded slowly.

"I promise."

"I love you."

Castiel just blinked slowly to approve and pulled Dean to him for another kiss.

##

They needed to talk about anything other than Castiel's hospitalization. Dean had just left for the hospital and they wouldn't have news until the next morning. Charlie had disappeared in the roadies' tourbus and they wouldn't take the road for hours, waiting for the traffic to be as fluid as possible on the highway. Sam was leaning against the tourbus' hood and was smoking a cigarette, Kevin at his side. The young man had become accustomed to the smell of smoke, it was almost comforting sometimes. They were discussing this and that, just so as not to allow themselves time to think. Of course, Sam had a fixed idea for some days, and Kevin was bearing its cost.

"Dude" Sam smiled. "You had the courage to leave your life behind you to play the cello across the country, and you still can't tell a girl you've known forever that you love her?"

"As if that was easy!" Kevin grumbled crossing his arms.

"It is!"

Kevin rolled his eyes and didn't replied. It was easy for Sam to say that, he didn't have to go home and explain to the girl he loved that he had thrown away the dream of his life. Sam had nowhere to go aside from the apartment he shared with Dean in LA and Kevin considered him lucky to still have people caring for him, expecting things from him. But coming back the first time after leaving Princeton had been hard enough like that. It has been more than two years now, and he still didn't felt brave enough to knock on the door of the family home with his long hair and his piercings, and smiling to his mother, trying to make her understand that her son, her sweet little Kevin, earned his living by traveling the roads of the United States playing music. She knew it of course, and during their phone call she continually told him that the important was that he get by. But that wasn't the frank and massive endorsement nor the pride he had seen in her eyes the day he had gone to Princeton.

It was just too hard to realize that whatever may have been accomplished, it doesn't matter if you have disappointed those you love in the process. So no, it wasn't easy to pick the phone and call Channing and check in with her. Not for him.

"Watch and learn!" Sam said throwing his cigarette butt in a puddle of water. He walked over to Madison and helped her setting up a crate in a truck, smiling at her.

"Burger and fries when you're done?" He suggested loud enough so a few steps away, Kevin could hear him. She nodded with a smile and walked away to look for a new crate.

"See?" Sam said while taking back his place beside the cellist.

"Not related." The young man mumbled. "She doesn't know you, she doesn't see you as the epitome of the guy who didn't succeed."

"I thought Channing was your friend, and she didn't care whether you were famous or not?"

"That's the case. But she has values, projects, and she sticks to it. I'm not really anymore the person who was her friend back in the day when I lived in Wisconsin. And I don't think she'd like the person I am today."

Sam didn't agree, but he knew when a discussion had no chance of lead to something. He deferred the topic until later and shook his friend's shoulder. He really missed Dean at this moment because he would have needed to talk with his brother. But he didn't answer the phone, and he probably wouldn't do so before seeing Castiel. Charlie had vanished with Dorothy and his self-preservation prevented Sam from looking for them. He eventually retreated in the tourbus with the notebook in which he scribbled meaningless and no worth interest phrases just to entertain himself.

Somewhat later in the night, Madison and he sat down to table one in front of the other under the almost unpleasant neon lights of a diner which gave them a strange complexion and were making their foods appear more colorful than they were in reality.

"There are more colors on one of your tattoos than in all your songs." Madison said thoughtfully watching Sam devour a handful of fries. He wiped his hands on a napkin of a rather similar pink than the heart of the lotus that stretched inside his forearm.

"Probably because I'm more colorful outside than inside."

"Inside everyone is mostly red." The young woman replied with a smile.

"It's not what I meant."

"I know."

They were tired and didn't necessarily feel the need to make conversation. They ate in the relative silence of a Led Zeppelin hit coming out of a Juke box a few tables away.

"What has erased your colors inside?" Madison asked, stirring the ice cubes in her glass with the tip of her straw.

Sam smiled, shaking his head. "You won't get me like that."

"Come on! You can't just play the mysterious man so we ask ourselves questions, and never answer!"

"Why?"

"Because it is frustrating!" She complained.

"Maybe I like frustrate people?" He said with a slight shrug.

Madison crossed her arms, determined to get an answer to her question. He chuckled and stuck his fork into one of his last fries. He never talked about that. It was to wonder why he persisted in telling the whole story on his own skin given how much effort he put on trying to not think about it. Dean knew, knew the whole story from the beginning. Kevin had guessed a portion, Charlie had never asked a question but she knew the most important. They all knew the pain and fear, they saw it in the songs he wrote and when he shut himself up for days alone with his drums, over there at home in California, they would simply leave him alone until he felt better. Slapping on the stretched skins of the instrument was a great improvement compared to before.

"Sorry, I shouldn't have insisted." Madison apologized.

"No. It's okay. What do you wanna know?"

After all, he had to talk about it one day, right? Since tattoos and piercings weren't enough to exorcise the pain. Since as hard as he would hit his drums it'd never be enough. Since after all, it was an old story, maybe tell it would help him to put it behind him?

She stared at him for a moment.

"The lotus?" She asked with a sign from the chin toward his right arm. Sam looked at the colorful tattoo a moment as if he didn't have it on for a so long time. The flower with the yellow and pink heart opened on a bed of ginkgo leaves just below the crook of his elbow.

"They only flower once every thousand years. And ginkgo trees were the first to blossom again after Hiroshima. Eight years ago I didn't have much else to hold on to, I watched it everyday to remind me that was going on anyway. I guess it worked."

"Which one did you do after?"

Sam smiled. "One that decency doesn't allow me to show in public." Madison rolled her eyes.

"Decency isn't usually your strong suit."

He just laughed, pushing his plate. "You know, if you wanted me to get naked you just had to ask nicely."

"You know, if you want a kick you know where you just have to ask nicely!" She grumbled. But she had a smile and he ordered their desserts to change the subject.

"You didn't answer my question about colors." She said while they were returning to the concert hall a few blocks away.

"Well..." Sam started, fists clenched in the pockets of his jacket. "I am the epitome of the good kid who went wrong. Then comes a girl, she is beautiful and nice and she more or less saved me. Then she dies. But you don't want me to tell you that."

"Actually I do." Madison said, eyes fixed before her. "That's the interesting part of the story."

"No you don't. Because after you're going to feel so sorry for me that you'll have to cheer me up with sex."

He hadn't expected to see her smile nor to reply that it had always been part of her plan. He felt himself blush and looked down. Flirt and seduce was a mean of communication that had come to him quickly and rather naturally, probably by imitation, by dint of seeing Dean seducing the whole world around him without even realizing. Yet he was still shaken by the people who used the same method on him, as if it didn't ring true, as if it was an elaborate ruse to attack him.

They had returned to their starting point. The tourbus were gradually returning to life, Dorothy came down from hers holding Charlie's hand. They had matted hair as if they just awakened from a nap, which was probably the case.

"We're leaving?" Sam asked.

Dorothy nodded, yawning. "Coffee first, then we hit the road, don't linger out." She advised before pulling Charlie by the hand toward Bobby who arrived with a tray full of steaming coffee for the drivers.

"So this is where we part?" Madison asked her hand on the door handle of her bus. Sam smiled.

"I thought you wanted to know for the tattoos?"

"They'll still be there tomorrow." She replied, tightening her jacket and her arms around her. She wasn't quite sure to be comfortable with the idea of being so close to him in the reduced space of the bus. Besides she was tired.

"Yep, but tomorrow I may not feel like showing them to you anymore." Sam said, leaning against the bus door, arms crossed. "Never been told to take your chance when it passes within your reach?"

Madison seemed to consider the question for a moment before pushing him firmly as far away from the handle as he was willing to step away from.

"I have. But I can recognize an opportunity that will happen again when I see one." She said, climbing the few steps leading to the door. From her spot she was the same size as Sam, which was a first. "Send me a note when you have news of Castiel."

Sam nodded silently and she slammed the door behind her.

Charlie, Dorothy and Kevin, grouped around the tiny table in the bus were waiting for the drummer to hit the road.

"Did your date went well?"

"That wasn't a date." Said Sam, throwing off his jacket over his bunk. "Not really."

Charlie looked at him quizzically.

"How long have you been hanging round her?"

"Three weeks. And I'm not hanging round her!" He defended himself while pushing Dorothy to get a place at the table with her. He stretched his long legs in the aisle of the bus.

"I've never seen you wait three weeks before jumping on someone." Kevin teased.

"People change" Sam replied laconically. He closed his eyes, fatigue was falling on him like a blanket. "Any news of Cas?"

He heard to the silence that followed his question that the answer was negative.

##

It was the morning of a new day that Castiel wasn't thrilled to begin. It was a thing to be ill when you're a child, when you don't necessarily understand all the words of the doctors, and that nurses have pens with pompoms of all kind of colors in the pockets of their coats.

It was something else to be here again, years after. He was too old now to be hospitalized in pediatrics and nurses only had in their pocket the four color pens whose acute "click" punctuated his day.

"Click" How are you today? (It was asked cheerfully before.)

"Click" I take your temperature (You'll give it back?). Still a little fever. "Click" a note on a paper already covered with scribbles and highlighter strokes that were the only touch of color except for the blue of their gown. "Click" I'll be back.

Click click click which was sometimes accompanied by the shrill and repetitive ringing of a patient who demanded help from someone for this or that. Castiel hated that ring, the noise had certainly been specially selected to get on the hospital staff's nerves. He used it the least possible and some of the nurses, the most churlish or the softer reprimanded him regularly.

"Call when you are in pain! Do not let the pain settle!" There were the same worn out words of being too repeated regardless of the caregiver. Compassion and kindness erased by work and stress. He didn't use the bell, preferred to fend for himself and he could only imagine the exasperated sighs exchanged about him in the rest room. After all what was the point? Some pain cannot be cured, or at a price that Castiel refused to pay.

He still had temperature, and still bruises which didn't disappear. They stretched over his skin in infinite shades of green, purple, yellow and black. Sometimes, pink or orange where blood had eventually been evacuated. He watched every morning at blood sampling a new formed hematoma and every morning he half-listened the nurse apologize by pressing an alcohol swab on the little prick, pathetic attempt to prevent the hematoma from spreading.

And all of that, he didn't find the first word to say it to Dean when he called in the afternoon after landing in Memphis. Instead, he made him tell his flight, avoiding to mention the medical examinations and the blatant lack of information on his condition. But he was well placed to know that Dean wouldn't have much to say. They eventually fall into a little heavy silence.

"Cas, how you doing?" Dean asked in the same tone he would have used to calm an angry dog.

Castiel sighed, turned his gaze to the window overlooking the rooftops. At long intervals thin columns of smoke dotted the gray concrete landscape blended into the sky at dawn and at dusk when the weather was gloomy.

"I pretty much learned to count here." Castiel says quietly. "The nurses gave me problems to solve when I was little. If one milliliter equals twenty drops and you want to pass me a fifty milliliters infusion over one hour at how many drops per second must we adjust the infusion rate?"

Dean said nothing, waiting for a reasonable word to escape from his lover. Or at least something that would seem related to the question he just asked. "I know the price of medical care, three hundred dollars for transfusion. To which you must add the salaries of the medical staff, the local maintenance, expenses and insurance from the hospital. Two thousand dollars a day in hospital. Four thousand dollars a stem cell transplant. I grew up seeing my parents' savings going up in smoke year after year and I'll never be able to repay them."

"They don't ask you to. You're alive, it's the only thing that matters to them."

"I know. But the truth has no hold on the human mind. It does not change the guilt or fear. And I'm scared." That was a very light way of putting it. Actually he was terrified. Terrified that he had reasons to worry. Terrified because nurses didn't say anything to him, because he had spent the day lugged from an examination room to another, and he had no result to calm his anxiety or justify it. "I'm so scared of having ruined everything."

"Ruined what?"

"The chance that you gave me."

"You didn't ruin anything Cas! If you're ill it has nothing to do with you, whatever you've done this isn't your fault." Dean was babbling, at the other end of the country without really knowing what he was telling, just hoping that the sound of his voice and reassuring words would calm his lover.

"You don't understand." Castiel said, closing his eyes.

"Because you don't explain to me." Dean retorted in a cold tone.

"How do you want me to explain that? For you to understand, I would..." He shrugged, the movement painfully pulled on his muscles and sore neck. "I would have to make you ill within the twinkling of an eye. And then heal you the same way. For you to understand the good it does to not suffer anymore. For you to understand what I owe you."

"You don't owe me anything."

"I do." Castiel replied by detaching his eyes off the pigeons who assembled on the roof for night, far above the ground, far above the cats. "I owe you everything. But you don't understand it."

##

"You wanna change the set list tonight?"

Kevin had just sat down on the chair in front of the Dean of the Grand Lodge of the group. From the scene were coming the chords of a support band of which the young man had forgotten the name immediately after hearing it. The singer had the features drawn of someone who hasn't slept in two days. He shook his head, running a hand over his face.

"No need, I've sung each of them so much I could do it while sleeping and everyone there would be completely taken in." He said.

"Even _Every Night_?" Kevin asked. "I'm not even sure that Charlie get to play it without crying. Nor I neither by the way."

Dean smiled, thinking about the song. He was clenching his phone between his fingers, almost hesitant to call Castiel again. It was still early in the evening on the West Coast, he wouldn't wake him up.

"Even _Every Night_." He replied. The song represented something important. It was probably one of the few that Dean could understand it to speak to someone other than him. It was the only one where he explicitly talked about his relationship with Castiel and the young man had absolutely refused it to appear on their second album.

"It's a song that one shouldn't listen anyhow, in a car or as a party background music... There are words that shouldn't be led astray like this." Had decreed the accountant.

Sam had made fun of Castiel's pompous style but they had agreed and they sang it only on stage. Dean nodded again, looking at Kevin.

"We're going to play it, it doesn't matter if we don't get to the end. The important thing is to do it anyway."

"_One thing I need to tell you_

_From the moment we met_

_Despite my lack of faith and my threats,_

_I prayed to you_

_Every night_"

That night when walking on stage, Sam squeezed his shoulder.

"You sure?" Dean nodded. He was sure.

The screams stopped to unknown chords, only the fans who had already seen them in concert knew the song and sang it in unison. Sometimes, Dean was tempted to stop and listen to them, but he closed his eyes and continued because it was a song he wouldn't bear to hear from someone else. It was the only declaration of love that he had agreed to do to Castiel in public and probably the most explicit song of their whole discography.

"_They said I would regret it,_

_They were wrong_

_'Cause everything now seem legit_

_Now I'm good and strong_"

He had the lights in the eyes, the sounds were muffled by his ear protectors, the stage was vibrating under the anonymous flood that faced them, and for the first time in twenty-four hours, Dean felt calm. The fatigue of his lightning trip to LA still weighed on his shoulders, but the floor vibrations went up to the pit of his stomach and seemed to nestle there like the purring of a cat. He had the mind clear. When tuning his guitar for the song, he wondered if this was what Castiel felt when listening him sing, this strange calm born of the things we can control, like a reassuring routine.

"_We agreed to fight_

_To make ourselves smile 'cause we're alive_

_That's our job, do it right_

_And do it again the next week_

_Or don't do it_"

The realization hit him in the middle of a verse. He turned toward Sam. Dean never turned his back to the audience but for once, he looked at his brother, his look of concentration as he dutifully beat the rhythm on the snare drum. Sam looked up at him, raising a confused eyebrow. They both knew that a camera was focusing on their silent exchange and was retransmitting it on the big screen that overhanged them.

That was why Sam had proposed almost jokingly to make music. To unburden himself without anyone listening. To exorcise his pain without endangering himself and his brother only understood that now, as the words of the song resonated strangely down his throat. The young man blinked and pointed with the end of a stick Charlie who was struggling on her bass, head down to hide her tears.

"_Don't ever change, I need you_

_Don't make me lose you too,_

_Cursed or not, I'd rather have you_

_Every night I pray to you_"

Dean moved toward her and gave her a slight shoulder strike. For the public it was probably a little game between them, but that was a sign of comfort. They couldn't talk and Dean had interrupted the song to get away from his microphone. He returned there with a look of support at Charlie while continuing to align the same chords to prolong the music.

"I'm going to lose my bassist very soon, so in her defense... This song is about someone important to us and if you believe in God or anything else... I think we might need all the prayers of the world right now."

Music was also this. A universal prayer. Sam greeted his declaration of a drum roll punctuated by a violent blow on a cymbal.

"_We've been through much together_

_I'll be by your side_

_Gritting my teeth and pulling the trigger_

_Protecting you from the rising tide_"

"Why did you played it anyway?" Charlie complained later that night after the concert. She was wearing a sweater that once belonged to Sam over her black shirt and was curled up on her bunk, her eyes were almost level with Dean's who was getting undressed before going to bed himself.

He didn't reply for a second, letting the time for a Kevin with still dripping hair to go past him to join his own bunk. The bus was traveling towards St. Louis and they would need more than fifteen hours of travel to reach their destination.

Sam had spread to his designated place with a book lent by Madison and Dean looked at him thoughtfully until his brother look up to him.

"What?"

"What would you have done if we hadn't done music?" He asked, clinging with one hand to Charlie's bunk to remove his socks. He would sleep in jeans tonight, too tired to take it off and anyway after being worn for forty-eight hours the clothing was what Dean was considering as more comfortable in the world. Sam closed his book, one finger between the pages and looked up at Kevin who was climbing on top of him to his own bed.

"I would have added lines to my criminal record I guess."

"What about you Kevin?"

"Do I have to answer to your riddle? I'm sleepy!" The young man groaned while turning his back to him.

Dean and Sam laughed softly. The singer raised his hand to take in his Charlie's which was hanging from her bunk.

"What would you've done Princess?"

"Accepted the job at Google I imagine."

Another laugh.

"Finally we're certainly all better here." Sam said, putting his book on the floor before slipping under the blanket. Dean nodded and pressed one last time Charlie's hand before releasing it. He slipped in his turn between the sheets that still vaguely smelled like Castiel and closed his eyes, sighing.

"_I'll fight for you if I have to,_

_They say we're wrong to believe_

_That dreams can come true_

_They're wrong and as long as I live_

_I'll put on a smile for you_

_And every night_

_I'll pray for you._"

"You know why I kept the song tonight Princess?"

"To piss me off?"

Dean smiled and straightened to hit the mattress of his friend's bunk, earning a groan of protest.

"So, why?" She asked in a lower tone.

The engine noise and breathings of Kevin and Sam created a confined and gentle atmosphere. Or exhaustion was getting the best of Dean's last barriers. He closed his eyes and let himself be overwhelmed by waves of sleep.

"Because it's the music that matters. Not the musician." He said softly before falling asleep.


	7. Chapter 7 : Duct Tape and Safety Pins

**Chapter 7:** Duct tape and safety pins

The ride leading them to St. Louis would last several hours and Madison had taken advantage of a break to sneak into the band tourbus least crowded than the roadies's. Charlie was in the front seat next to Dorothy and Kevin and Dean were watching a rerun of _Project Runway_. Sam was reading on his bunk, Madison pushed him with her fingertips for him to make room for her.

"What are you reading?"

The tour had become over the months a book swapping which only Kevin and his classification system managed to keep a track of. An orgy of paper, a literary gang bang in which everyone had to revise their expectations downward or rarely upward in hopes of stave off the boredom. In one month, Madison had had in her hands more erotic magazines than throughout her life. Actually most of the time she had to return the magazine three times before realizing who was where on the pictures. The totality of _A Song of Ice and Fire_ series was scattered here and there in the different bus, along with the _Liquor series_ from Poppy Brite which had, originally, been Dean's bedside book. Kevin's philosophy collections shamelessly mixed with Kathy Kelly's romances as well as a good third of Stephen King's books. She sat next to Sam, raising his arm to see the book cover.

"_Farenheit 451_? Well above what goes around here." She commented.

"Cas forgot it when he left."

"And don't lose my page, I didn't finish it!" Dean yelled from the lounge area of the bus.

Sam nodded, carefully replacing the bookmark where his brother had paused. Madison settled more comfortably and he placed the book between them. They read the first and the second encounter between Montag and Faber and stopped when the old professor gave him the atrium and their vehicle stopped its route to refuel.

The bus emptied of its occupants except Sam and Madison discussing on what they had read.

"Tell me, if that's not indiscreet, what's a smart girl like you doing here?" The drummer asked, gesturing the bus and the whole tour in general. The smile of the young woman froze and she pulled away from him. "Sorry" he apologized immediately. "I didn't mean to.. That was indiscreet..."

"You apologize a lot for a bad boy." She joked.

"I try not breaking the ranks too much. So you're going to tell me or not?"

Madison nodded but took a moment before starting to speak, she looked tense and uncomfortable. "There's not much to say. I was secretary in an import export company, I had an apartment, a cat, a boyfriend. The ideal life. And then something happened with Kurt. That's the name of my boyfriend, well, ex."

"Something went wrong?"

"He was jealous, began to follow me everywhere, to send threatening letters to all of the men I knew, including my boss. He locked me in the apartment one night so I did not go to a reception of my work."

"Wow... Excuse me but you had found a real asshole!"

Madison nodded. Sam waited in vain that she spoke again.

"What were you doing with him?"

She shrugged. "I don't know. I mean, it's not like he introduced himself, like, "Hi, I'm possessive and controlling and I like to punch people. Wanna be my girlfriend?" "

Sam nodded. "Yeah, well, I guess we all make mistakes."

"Yeah, well, mine's wanted by the police. But I had been with him for two years, you don't easily turn your back on it." Sam made a dubious pout. "Actually" Madison started again. "I was too insecure to leave."

"I find that hard to believe."

"And yet that was the case... However, things change, life changes when your man beats you up one day in the street and you end up in hospital." She wasn't looking at Sam anymore now, not sure that she'd be able to face her memories if she saw any emotion on his face miroring hers. Months after she was still afraid and sometimes at night she would turn around on a figure or a gait that reminded her of Kurt and her pulse would quicken.

Sam didn't say anything.

"But then it hit me. I could keep feeling sorry for myself, or I could take control of my life. I chose the latter. I dumped Kurt, resigned and left as far as I could go."

Sam was still silent, but he took Madison's hand into his and she wondered if he was aware that he was stroking her palm with the tip of the thumb.

"I was afraid he'd find me if I stayed too long in one place, so I looked for the least stable job possible. That's how I ended up here."

Dean and Kevin went back in the bus escorted by Charlie. They heard Dorothy's door slam by closing up. Madison waited for the bus to set off again and for the others to be settled before turning back to Sam again.

"What about you? How did you end up in the star business?" She asked to divert the conversation from her.

From the lounge she heard Dean's laughter but the singer made no move to turn around, knowing that his brother wouldn't answer if he had an audience of more than one person. Sam ran a hand through his hair, banged his elbow against the upper bunk, grumbled, delaying the time to honestly answer the question. Finally, with a sigh, he turned to display his back to Madison and pulled up his shirt, revealing the tribal wolf tattoo that stretched on his hip, and, above, between his shoulder blades the outline of a teddy bear, a torn ear from which stuffing came out, one of the button that served as eyes dangling at the end of its yarn, the belly resewn with big stitches. The toy was placed on a ribbon on which she had to squint to read "_Duct tape and safety pins inside_".

"Yesterday I told you about the first one. The teddy is the second one. The wolf, it's Dean."

Madison brushed the tatto with the tip of her thumb. The wolf stretched from his right hip to the middle of his back, legs going up along his spine, nose in the air as if he was about to howl at the moon. He was in profile and only one of his eyes was visible, mint green.

He let his shirt and faced her again. He held out his left arm, the one almost entirely covered with flowers and indicated a magnolia in the crook of his elbow.

"This one, I got it two years after, when I finally beared to think about her. It was her favorite flower."

The story was coming disjointed and without apparent logic, but Madison said nothing. She would understand at the end, like in those police novels where you don't know the name of the murderer until the very last page. But he stopped and didn't spoke for a while, massaging the magnolia on his arm with his thumb.

"Why _"Duct tape and safety pins"_?" Madison asked softly. This particular tattoo was strange, it seemed more personal than the others, less aesthetic. Perhaps the sentence, perhaps the teddy bear that seemed out of a children's book, a bit out of place among the others. Sam took a deep breath and closed his eyes for a moment as if to gather his thoughts.

"Because that's how I am inside. It's long and complicated to explain."

"I have time, and I'm smart. Maybe I can understand."

He smiled.

"To understand, we must go back quite far. And it has nothing to do with your question about the star business."

Madison leaned back in the bottom of the bunk, Sam's pillow behind her back and stretched her legs out to lay her ankles on the drummer's thighs. She spread the gray curtains that obscured the small window to look outside the road stretching under their wheels.

"As I said, I have time."

Sam started to tell. He was well aware that Kevin and Charlie were listening. That unless he formally forbid her to, the bassist would tell everything to Dorothy later. But after all, as childishly painful as the story was, he didn't have to hide it as if he was ashamed of it. Did it really have to come out today? Like that, years after? While a bleak landscape passed through the window of the purring bus that took them around the whole country? With the feet of a girl he barely knew on his knees? In the presence of people who were now his family and who had accepted him without never asking him more questions than the ones he could stand to respond to?

The answer was obviously yes.

He thought before starting the story that life wasn't like in the books. That important things didn't occur in a large melodramatic outcome full of grandiloquence and fancy words. They occurred just in time, or at the most inappropriate moment. On a Missouri road.

That didn't make it less difficult to tell and the words wedged in his throat, cut his tongue and hurt his lips by crossing them for the first time. But he realized, as he pronounced them, that it hurt him less than he had expected.

1990

"Dean!" Sam's small pleading voice said. Dean shook his head.

"No Sammy! You perfectly know we can't!"

Sam tightened his little arms strongly around the puppy which yelped of discomfort and squirmed to lick his face. Sam laughed and loosened a bit his grip on the animal. He was seven, had a big smile full of dimples and stars in his eyes. Two of these facts didn't happen every day, and from the top of his eleven years of age, Dean began to foresee that it wasn't normal. Sam should have been like the puppy he held in his arms, shuddering, happy.

"Dad will never agree, you know that Sammy!"

Dean hated being the voice of reason because somehow it wasn't for him to do that, for him to see the smile of his little brother wither as he reluctantly let go of the puppy.

"But I had found a name for him already!" He whined. "I'll take care of him Dean I promise! Dad won't even know he's here!"

Dean pursed his lips. The puppy was cute and was beginning to curiously sniff the bottom of his jeans. Dean crouched beside Sam to pet the animal which put its paws on his knees and held out its nose to sniff the new hand that was caressing it. They were in the middle of the street, next to the large box that had contained the small puppies that someone was trying to get rid of. This one was the last, he was skinny with big ears and black round eyes. If it had had a fringe, it would have looked like Sam and this one thought wrenched Dean's heart while he was gently scratching the animal behind the ears.

"We can't Sammy." He put the whimpering dog back in its box and took his brother by the hand to drag him away.

Sam's attitude changed in the following days. Dean hadn't mentioned the puppy to John, just as his younger brother. Yet the child was less thoughtful, a little more open, more smiling. Dean thought he had made a new friend at school. Sam was pretty good at making friends. And probably someone who lived in the neighborhood because Sam would regularly do homeworks at the end of the street at the Harvelle's. Dean was happy with this change in behavior, but still curious. He secretly followed Sam one day. He didn't realize right away what he saw. Looking back years later after Jess' death, he thought it was extremely revealing of Sam's personality. But the 11 year old Dean only saw his little brother pushing the Harvelle's doorway and be greeted by a small ball of golden hair and yapping. The animal was wearing a collar and giving Sam an enthusiastic welcome as if it belonged to him.

Later, presented with a fait, Sam told him, his hands clasped between his knees that he had proposed to Jo to adopt the dog in exchange for all of his pocket money.

"He was going to die in the street Dean!"

"Daddy won't be happy if he finds out!" Dean warned.

Sam frowned and slightly straightened up on the bed where he was sitting. "I've done nothing wrong! This is Jo's dog and I have the right to do whatever I want from my pocket money! And if she doesn't mind that I play with her dog where's the harm in that?"

Dean sighed.

"I couldn't let him die alone in the street Dean. I didn't want him to be alone too!"

And Dean hadn't protested. That very day he had realized how weak he was in front of his little brother's sad eyes. How hard it was to fill all by himself the more and more frequent absences of their father, and how Sam needed to be loved.

How had they managed to keep the secret for so long he had no idea. But when Apple (Sam had called the dog like that because he thought he had the same color than the big yellow apples Jo's mother used to cook Dean's favorite pies) had died two years later, hit by a car, Sam had been inconsolable. So that even John, who though paid little attention to his sons since they were in age to dress by themself, noticed. When he knew the whole story, he looked coldly at Sam and Dean was sure he was about to yell at his brother. But he just shrugged. "This is a lesson you're going to have to learn very quickly my son. To love is expose yourself to pain."

It was probably one of the wisest things that John had transmitted to them. But being nine years old, the little boy who had just lost his dog didn't understand that John spoke from experience, having himself lost his wife long ago. He only knew that the pain he felt would inevitably return sooner or later. Because he loved Dean more than Apple and Apple's death was already horrible. What would happen if he lost Dean someday? And he loved his father too. And so far nothing had come to prove that John was wrong.

Love was to expose himself to the suffering and there were some pains that Sam didn't feel able to endure. Like it or not, grieving are many in a lifetime, Apple was only the first one. Then came the daily grievings, the mundane pains that seemed insurmountable at the moment. Gradually, Sam got used to the idea that love always brought suffering. Dean kept trying to tell him it was silly to believe that, to tell him he couldn't help loving, but Sam tried anyway. And he succeeded pretty well.

And then there was Jess.

Sam interrupted his story to swallow the lump in his throat. Talking about her had become less difficult over the years, but it was still painful. It always brought the same images behind his closed eyelids. Her smile when she saw him in the morning, her dancing approach in the street, and the ghostly feel of her fingers pressing against Sam's cheeks when she drew him to her to kiss him. Sometimes when he closed his eyes and concentrated hard enough, he could almost seem to smell her perfume again.

He cleared his throat and tried to resume his story.

"Dean wrote his first song when he was twenty years old and I was sixteen, I think. I was already a little jerk at the time."

"You aren't..." Madison protested but Sam silenced her with a nod.

"Oh yes. All of Lawrence cops know who I am, believe me. And it was always Dean who picked me up at the station. He probably didn't yelled at me as many times nor as strong as he should have, and I was long to understand that it was because he didn't hold me solely responsible for my bullshit."

Madison smiled. "I don't know any teenager who doesn't make any bullshit."

"You didn't know Dean, then. All he didn't do, I did a hundredfold." He rose cautiously to get their notebook. Somewhere in the locations reserved for cards, remained one of the few evidences of that time. He handed Madison a picture of him. He couldn't be more than fifteen or sixteen. He was thin, hair even longer than now, and someone had photographed him playing with a dog standing on its hind legs and almost as tall as he. Madison examined the picture for a while. Whoever had taken it had to be either very good or very in love with Sam because from the old shot emerged something desperately joyful and tender.

"I was seventeen. I had run away from home. The girl who took this picture certainly still has a target with my face in the middle. Dean knows what I did to her, and if you wanna know what kind of asshole I was at the time you can ask him. I honestly thought he was going to beat me when the cops came down on me and that he picked me up at the station and quite honestly I would have deserved it. And instead he locked up in the garage and he wrote a song. Well, the beginning of a song."

"What did it say?" Madison asked.

"_He made sure your heart looks as good in black and blue, as my soul in bloody hues._"

"Juste that?"

Sam nodded. "Just that. As far as I know he never found anything else to write about. And even back then I understood that he was talking about our father." He turned to her with as few expressions as possible on the face. "My father never laid a hand on me, not once, even when I would have deserved it. And I guess you could consider that it was a proof of his concern for me, but when Dean came for me that day, he still had a scar on his lip and leftovers of a black eye. If you ask him he'll tell you he caught himself on a wall or he has been mugged in the street. I know when he lies, and believe me, he lies."

Madison said nothing for a moment, digesting the information, then "Does Dean still see himself like that? As a soul in bloody hues?"

Sam considered the question for a moment before answering. "I think so. I also believe that he thinks that Castiel can remedy it."

"What do you think?"

Sam chuckled without joy. "All I can tell you is that I received enough blows to know the marks they leave aren't only black and blue. Even in the heart." He said. "It's because of that, the tattoo. Duct tape and safety pins. This is the only thing that keeps me up most of the time."

Madison didn't comment when she saw him mechanically massage the multicolor lotus on his forearm. She wanted to cry and hold him in her arms. She didn't do so. She handed him back the photo he carefully put away in the notebook.

##

Dean had pricked his ears up, as Kevin and Charlie to hear his brother's story. He admired the synthesis, the almost clinical clarity with which Sam outlined the facts. He probably had learned that during his years at Stanford. To be specific, concise.

Yet Sam let aside a whole part of the story, one he probably had no desire to expose and Dean could understand. He spoke of Apple, his running away, and after a long silence, he began to talk about Jessica.

He had rarely mentioned her in the five years since her death. First, because the subject was too painful, and then because it was useless to reopen old wounds. He had written songs about her, for most too personals to go out of their leather book. He had a tattoo of her name on the knuckles and the magnolia that had been the favorite flower of the girl. But he had hardly ever talked about her.

"I wasn't a good guy when arriving at Stanford." Sam said. He had put his elbows on his knees, imprisoning Madison's ankles between his thighs and torso. He was looking at the ground as if the floor of the tourbus was a fount of memories.

"Jess, she was a good girl in every respect. She earned credits by volunteering at the administrative office, that's where I met her. I won't tell you the whole story, that'd be pointless. But she got me out of drunk tank way more often than you can imagine. I think the cops in Palo Alto knew us all in the end. She made me stop fighting in bars. Well almost, let's say that she improved me much. She thought that I was worth something and by dint I ended up believing it too."

Sam looked up to watch the young woman, he was nervously wringing his hands and she nodded slowly to motion him that she was still listening.

"It went on for my two years at Stanford. And I really fell in love with her. I had bought the ring, I wanted to marry her." He had a lump in his throat as Madison, and further in the bus, the others had lowered the TV sound so they could hear him. He didn't realize, deep in his memories.

"We were living together and an evening Dean broke into our home. I hadn't seen him since I had left home, and she convinced me to go out for a drink with him. It took us more than a drink to tell two years of life, and when we went back at the end of the night, there had been a fire."

Dean clenched his teeth when he heard his brother. They both remembered the firefighter sirens, the panic in the eyes of Sam discovering it was his building that was burning, his frantic search for Jessica among the survivors wrapped in blankets despite the blazing fire a stone's throw.

"She didn't make it." Sam said in a lower tone. He was now massaging the letters tattooed in white on his knuckles, one on each finger: J.E.S.S. "I have no memory of that day. They didn't want to let me see the body, not until the funeral parlor had taken care of her, and even after that... A burned body is never a pretty sight."

Madison nodded and moved closer to him. He had lowered his head so low that his forehead was almost touching his wrists. She wrapped an arm around his shoulders, waiting for a development that couldn't come. She had bent her knees, her ankles still trapped against Sam's stomach, and together they had to look like a strange sculpture in the frame of the bus' bunk beds.

"I don't even know how long I stayed prostrate. Dean called our father a few days later. We were under house arrest during the time of the police investigation and he didn't know how to get me out of my bed. The only answer he got from my father was that a man worthy of this name faces his problems alone."

Madison frowned.

"But he should have understood, I mean... You had just lost the love of your life!"

Sam turned to her with a thoughtful look. He had to twist his neck in an odd angle to see her and even then she had half her face hidden by his bangs. "You think Jess was the love of my life?"

"I think that tragically losing a still keen love is necessarily like losing the love of his life." She replied. "And whatever your father have thought, it was his role to be near you to get through this."

"Dean's the one who was near me. My father eventually talked to me."

"What did he say?"

"He said "Remember Apple"."

Madison didn't answer but she pursed her lips so hard that Sam didn't need much imagination to know what she was thinking. He felt her nails sink slightly in his shoulder as a supporting sign.

"And you did." It was a statement.

He nodded. "Shouldn't get attached to something you can lose." He said by gently pushing her in order to straighten up. She pulled away from him, enough to rest her feet on the ground.

"But everything can be lost. Things, people, life..."

"I know. So I don't attach myself to anything, this way whatever I lose it'll never be a tragedy again."

Madison pursed her lips. "Even Dean?"

Sam shook his head. "It's different, you can't stop loving someone you loved all your life."

"What about your drums?"

He shrugged. "What does it matter?"

"Your songs?"

"Once they're written, they don't matter."

"What about this?" Madison asked again, putting her hand on his arm over the lotus tattoo.

"Memories. Memories shouldn't matter either." He was talking very low now, as if telling his story had exhausted him.

"But they do."

He nodded, leaned against the back of the couch, closing his eyes. Madison was seeing again in her thoughts the tattoo in his upper back, where nobody could see it unless he wanted to. The shredded teddy bear, the big sew where its heart should have been and the phrase below. "_Duct tape and safety pins inside_."

That was how he was seeing himself and so he had chosen to be. She wanted to cry suddenly and realized that apart from the purring of the motor and the vibrations of the bus there was no sound around them. She caught Dean's eye beyond the short hallway leading to his own bunk. He slowly looked away. Seated next to each other, Kevin and Charlie turned their attention to the now nearly mute TV screen and one of them turned the sound up as to give them a moment of intimacy.

It was probably not the best thing to do, and she knew it. She could recognize a stupid decision when she was taking one, but this didn't stopped her from slipping between the wall and Sam's shoulder, moving her arms around him and laingy her head on his shoulder.

"I'm sorry." She said quietly. She didn't see his puzzled look, just felt him slightly moving an arm around her waist in a more comfortable position.

"It's not your fault."

"I'm sorry for making you talk about it. I probably shouldn't have."

"No. I think it makes some good to talk about it. Deep down."

The television had retrieved its normal volume and Madison wondered if it was justified to end their embrace, but Sam spoke again.

"I'd warned you that if you knew my story you'd feel obliged to comfort me with sex." He said in a half-amused tone. She laughed even though it was more awkward than fun.

"In fact you made all of this up just in this purpose, right?"

"Absolutely."

She closed her eyes, settle more comfortably against his shoulder and decided not to move. "There were simpler ways." She teased.

"I know. But simplicity isn't my thing."

They eventually joined the three others before the little television. She hold his hand and he didn't let go.

Later, at the next stop, she returned to her own bus and Charlie and Kevin slipped away for a nap. They were arriving to St. Louis. Dean and Sam were left alone in front of a television they didn't really watched anymore.

"You didn't told everything." Said the older.

Sam shrugged, eyes glued to the TV. "She doesn't need to know everything in one go."

"The others never knew."

"The others never asked."

Dean had an assent pout. Usually the girls who gravitated around Sam were more interested in his status or his physical than his life. Madison was clearly one of the exceptions.

"What you said, about your stays in jail..." The singer started without looking at his brother. "It wasn't you just behaving wrongly, or passing through your adolescent crisis. It was your way to become strong enough to run away."

Sam nodded. "And abandon you. And you know how much I'm sorry for that. I was thoughtless and selfish but I needed to go."

"I know. And no one's blaming you for that."

"I blame myself."

Dean smiled. "This little bro', reproaching myself for everything that's my job!"

Sam gave him a hit in the shoulder, looking at him for the first time of their conversation. "Nah, your job is to worry about me and getting my ass out of slammer." He joked.

"And telling you dad was wrong." Dean acquiesced. Sam returned him a puzzled look, his frown was making his piercing flicker. "He said "If you leave, don't ever come back", and he might really thought it but... If you do another bullshit, if you leave by slamming the door. I want you to know that I will leave it open so you can come back one day."

Sam said nothing for a moment, the forgotten TV produced a background noise which added to the purr of the engine and the bumps in the road.

"You should make a song about it." He finally said. Dean smiled.

"It's planned."

##

It was strange to see just how Castiel had become a part of their lives in a few years. It was as if he was part of the landscape, him being there or not. And knowing him in hospital curiously weighed on each of them. Kevin was unusually silent, Charlie had left her bass exercises that usually rocked them all during bus rides, Dean and Sam shared a grim and worried expression. They all jumped when Dean's phone rang in the late afternoon, a few miles from St. Louis.

The sound was raw and full of noises, and he put the speaker so loud that in the bus they heard the vague echo of hospital noises at the other end of the country. He didn't wonder if it was something Castiel didn't want to share with anyone else. The question didn't even crossed his mind. He was part of his family, all the people present in the bus, even Dorothy on the driver' seat, were part of his family. And they all had as much right as he had to know. They needed to.

He didn't know the voice that spoke and introduced herself as Dr. Talbot.

"I have good news for you Castiel."

Dean felt his heart clench curiously. As if he had so far managed to ignore the problem, to repress the anxiety deep deep down in himself and that it was resurfacing in the strangest moment possible.

"The scanners showed nothing, neither did the marrow biopsy. There are no signs of recurrence of leukemia."

She spoke with clarity and precision but Dean was wondering if he was really understanding the words coming out of the phone, wasn't the distance camouflaging abominable news under comforting words? Charlie had descended from her bunk and had put a hand on his shoulder that Dean took in his by habit.

"So what do I have?" Castiel asked hoarsely.

"A significant anemia, an incredible number of dietary deficiencies and a lung infection. Basically your body is exhausted like an old man's."

Dean imagined Castiel's puzzled frown.

"How come?" The singer asked, having totally forgotten the speaker on his phone.

"You tell me." Dr. Talbot snapped. "Castiel has just returned from a three week holiday with you. People are supposed to rest on vacation, not getting sick!"

Suddenly, Dean felt horribly guilty. He distinctly saw again the three weeks with Castiel, the little rest they had taken between bus trips, concerts and the nights shortened by the need they had of each other. He saw the fast foods, the more rare restaurants with still similar menus, breakfasts missed to stay in bed for another hour, dinners skipped in favor of a bottle of whiskey or an evening playing on the console Charlie carried with her everywhere. "It's my fault." He sighed, running a hand over his face. "The holidays were not particularly relaxing."

"If I had wanted to rest I would have done so!" Castiel snorted at the other end.

Everyone in the bus could imagine him looking daggers at them and the ornery look on his face they had all seen at least once. Dr. Talbot began to formulate a list of lifestyle rules to follow strictly from now on. The phone didn't retransmit Castiel's exasperated sigh but they were sure that there had been one.

Dean had expected waves of relief, that a weight left his chest. Yet nothing happened, his ears buzzing while the doctor indicated Castiel that she would prescribe him dietary supplements and antibiotics he needed and that he would have to come back for further tests next month. He remembered the concert nights the previous weeks, trying to imagine his own fatigue tenfold by the disease settling slowly to understand the feelings of his lover. He felt guilty for each of Castiel coughing fits of which he hadn't paid attention. Guilty for each minute of sleep he had deprived him, even guilty for not being able to lock him in a sterile bubble to protect him from all diseases of the earth. He had clenched his hand through his hair, elbows on knees, head lowered so much that his forehead was almost touching the table before him.

Charlie passed both arms around his neck and his chest and leaned forward over the seat back for laying a kiss on his temple.

"It's not your fault, Dean. Other than drugging his coffee no one could have forced him to spare himself." He smiled, eyes closed to not cry and Castiel nodded by a groan at the other end of the line. He was alive. He was going to live. It was nothing, nothing serious and they had all worried for nothing.

Before he cut the speaker, Sam and Kevin shouted their get well wishes and Charlie sent the young man kisses from her and Dorothy. She only let go of Dean, reluctantly, when the latter broke away from her embrace of a movement of the shoulders. With an apologetic smile he lifted the phone to his ear and she went away for share the news with Dorothy.

"How's the accountant?" The driver asked without taking her eyes off the road.

"Better than we feared. Lung infection, fatigue, anemia. Nothing a steak and a good pillow can fix, apparently."

Dorothy smiled, which curiously didn't soften her features. "I don't think he sleeps well without Dean."

Charlie shrugged and leaned in the seat, placing her bare feet on the dashboard. "I don't think he sleeps at all with Dean."

"I heard that!" The singer yelled, further in the bus.

"And I'm perfectly right!" She yelled back. The road was beginning to tuck of small houses as they approached the city. Later in the evening it would be a new hall, then another concert somewhere. Everything changed daily in their lives while remaining curiously similar, to the difference of the landscapes that bordered the roads.

"It's weird, when I met Castiel, I could have sworn he was fine." Charlie said quietly.

"He was." Dorothy pointed out.

"You know what I mean."

"I do. But you're wrong to think that he's different from the others." The driver replied with a slight smile.

"Why? Don't you think that having survived such a disease makes you different?"

"Every people you meet is struggling against something you have no idea about, Red. Often it's not visible, and no one talks about it, but everyone is fighting."

"You're fighting?" Charlie asked, turning her head toward her partner.

"Everyday."

"Against what?"

"What 'bout you?"

Charlie turned her attention to the road. "You dodged the question."

"As you did." Dorothy took her eyes off the road for a moment to smile at her and Charlie childishly stuck her tongue out at her.


End file.
